Youth Services: Building Relationships, Programs, and Engagement

After you attend this course, you’ll be able to:

• Identify and work through age-based biases.
  


• Understand adolescent brain development.
  


• Advocate for teens in your library.
  


• Manage teen behavior challenges in a trauma-informed way.
  


• Try new methods and techniques to engage youth in library programs.
  


• Create and maintain a youth advisory board.
  


• Help youth identify mis- and disinformation.
  

Week 1: Understanding, Advocating for, and Managing Youth
Thursday, May 8, 2025

Course & Workshop Introduction | 2:00-2:20 pm ET
An introduction to the weekly assignments, an overview of what to expect from the online workshop in this course, and a chance to complete the course pre-assessment.

Session 1 | 2:20-3:20 pm ET
Managing Teen Behavioral Challenges, Pt. 1: Understanding and Advocating for Teens
What should youth services librarians know about adolescent brain development to improve teen advocacy and to help proactively prevent behavior challenges? How do you advocate for youth inside and outside of your library? And how can you establish clear boundaries and expectations to help set everyone up for success? This session will discuss tangible ways to better understand, advocate for, and mitigate challenges with youth.

Speaker:

Christi Showman Farrar, Library Consultant, Massachusetts Library System (MLS)

 Break | 3:20-3:30 pm ET

Session 2 | 3:30-4:15 pm ET
Managing Teen Behavioral Challenges, Pt. 2: Restorative Practices
How can you respond to teen behavior challenges in a trauma-informed way? And how can you use restorative justice practices to encourage accountability and relationship building when harm is caused? This session will discuss ways to handle behavior issues with youth, both during and after an incident. We will also discuss proactive strategies such as how to be an effective mentor and how to build meaningful relationships with young people.

Speaker:

Stephen Jackson, (he, him) Founder, Global CommUnity Associates, library lover, and restorative practitioner/trainer

Session 3 | 4:15-4:45 pm ET
Perceptions of Youth: Recognizing and Removing Biases
What perceptions do we have of adolescence, and how do those perceptions impact how we treat young people? This session will discuss how to recognize and work through age-based biases to improve your services with and for youth.

Speaker:

Dr. Laurel Krapivkin, Ph.D. (she, her) Adjunct Professor of Writing & Literature

Week 2: Engaging Youth in Library Programs
Thursday, May 15, 2025

Workshop Explanation | 2:00-2:15 pm ET
An introduction to this week’s assignment and an overview of what to expect from the online workshop in this course.

Session 1 | 2:15-3:30 pm ET
Engaging Teens in Library Programs: A Roundtable
How do you get young people involved in library programs and services? What are the best outreach strategies to make sure they know about what the library offers? This session will discuss practical outreach and engagement strategies to reach teens where they are and encourage them to participate in the library.

Speakers:

Isaiah West, (he, him) Teen Services Specialist, Prince George's County Memorial Library System (MD)

Donna Gray, Bronx Library Coordinator for the NYC School Library System

Break | 3:30-3:45 pm ET

Session 2 | 3:45-4:45 pm ET
Including Youth Voices: Partnering with Students for Youth Programs
The best way to know what young people want and need is to ask them directly. Many librarians are struggling to engage youth in programs, but this session will help you solve this problem by teaching you how to create meaningful youth partnerships. You will learn tangible ways to involve youth directly in the conception and development of youth programs, from focus groups to youth advisory boards and more. Join this session and hear from experts about innovative ways that they’ve involved youth to co-create successful, sustainable programs.

Speaker:

Jane Gov, Senior Librarian, System-Wide Youth Services at Pasadena Public Library and Branch Manager at Jefferson Branch Library

Week 3: Enhancing Youth Services through Partnerships
Thursday, May 22, 2025

Workshop Explanation | 2:00-2:15 pm ET
An introduction to this week’s assignment and an overview of what to expect from the online workshop in this course.

Session 1 | 2:15-3:15 pm ET
Teaching Information Literacy: Helping Students Identify Mis- and Disinformation
How can you help students identify mis- and disinformation in a time when AI and deep fakes are becoming more and more convincing? What is the library's role in vetting material and helping young people understand factual information? This session will help you understand how to vet information for yourself and give you tools to help students and youth with information literacy.

Speaker:

Mrs. Lisa Manganello (she, her) School Librarian, South Brunswick High School

Break | 3:15-3:30 pm ET

Session 2 | 3:30-4:45 pm ET
Innovative Youth Programs: A Roundtable
Do you want new ideas for programs to develop in your library? Hear from a panel of librarians about programs they've run that have successful engaged teens.

Speakers:

Olisha James, (she, her) Manager, Teen Ambassador Programs, The New York Public Library

Jillian Rudes, School Librarian New York City Department of Education, Executive Director Manga in Libraries

Tess Wilson, Deputy Director of Library Freedom Project

Who should take this course

This course is for public youth services librarians, school librarians (grades 8-12), and other stakeholders in youth library programs and management.

This will be a 3-week online course and will include:

• Live Sessions: Guest speaker presentations by leaders in their field. (All sessions are recorded for on demand access for six months after the course ends.)
  
  
• Facilitated discussions:  Audience participation in Q&A and discussion with guest speakers.
  
  
• Asynchronous workshop: Project-based weekly assignments to connect what you’re learning to your professional life. Includes written feedback from an expert in the field who functions as the workshop facilitator, as well as peer conversation via discussion forums. Workshop available for all multi-week courses plus half-day courses where indicated.

• Early access on-demand resources:  Access to a series of past live session archives from Library Journal and School Library Journal courses to explore at your own pace.
  
  
• Online Classroom: The virtual learning platform that holds all course content and is accessible for six months after the course ends.

*Note: You do not have to complete the asynchronous work during these three weeks; it will be open to you for six months. However, the feedback from facilitators will only be available from June 3-24. 

Expected time commitment

If you attend or watch the recordings of all live sessions and participate in the asynchronous workshop, you'll spend approximately 2-4 hours per week on this course. You'll earn 15 hours of PD credit and a Library Journal certificate of completion.

On-demand access

All live guest speaker sessions are recorded and available on-demand for six months following the initial broadcast as a part of your purchase.

Certificate of completion

Complete the course and earn 15 professional development credit hours. We provide a certificate that is emailed to you.

Accessibility

All guest speaker sessions feature auto captioning and are made available on demand after the initial broadcast. Please email course-support@libraryjournal.com upon registration if you require any special accommodations and we will make our best efforts to facilitate them.

Support

For support with online courses, please contact course-support@libraryjournal.com.

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Group Rates

We offer discounts for groups of 3 or more.

For larger groups of 15 or more, we offer the option to apply group rates across multiple courses to receive significant discounts. For more information, select “Bulk Course Credits Packages” in the form below.

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