Library Vibe Squad: Bringing Student Voice into Your Space with a Leadership Team
Want to bring more student voice into your library space? Start a library student leadership team! Our Library Vibe Squad helps plan programs, displays, outreach, etc. I'll share about the process of getting started, planning meetings, divvying up responsibilities and creating space for student voice. Students from our leadership team will be at the session to share their own experiences. No matter where you're at with student leadership in your library, there will be something for you here.
Two teams of students (one for middle school, one for upper school) who help bring student voice into our library by helping plan events and programs and support the management of the library. There isn't a specific number at this point, but currently we have about 10 in middle school and about 20 in upper school.
We used a Google Forms application for students to express an interest in participating. They had to explain why they wanted to be a part of library leaders and what they feel they could contribute.
We have meetings every other week during lunch and we'll frequently setup informal meetups when there's extra work to do, like lots of shelving, weeding books, decorating for a special event, etc.
Mrs. Rendina offered trainings for check out/shelving so that students who are interested can help support library management. We have no library secretary or formal library assistants, so trained library leaders helps to keep the checkout desk open even if Mrs. Rendina is working with a class.
We created focus teams to help organize planning. The goal is to have these teams work on specific projects on their own and then bring them back to the whole group at our regular meetings.
Aesthetics/Vibes : Making the library look more awesome. Creating book talk cards, displays, bulletin boards, decor, tidying shelves, etc
Social Media & Communications : Help create content for library Instagram and TikTok, other communications. Mrs. Rendina shares Canva templates with students and we use Planoly to allow students to submit content and write captions for the Instagram account.
Book Budget : Planning book purchases, surveying students for suggestions, etc. This team will go on our Barnes & Noble book shopping trip (upper school) or will create an order based off student wishlists on Mackin (middle school)
Education Programs : Work on library education projects like Banned Books Week, School Library Month, etc
Event Planning : Organize book movie nights, author visits, fundraisers, book drives, etc.
Makerspace : Help plan Maker days, come up with new ideas for our makerspace, etc