 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. The show is broadcast live at 10 a.m. every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us, we do record the show every week as we are doing today. And it will be available to you to watch at your convenience. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries similar to your state library in your states potentially. So we provide services, training, consulting to all types of libraries in Nebraska. So you will find topics on our show for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives. It really runs the gamut. Really our only criteria is that it is something to do with libraries. Something we think libraries should be doing or could be doing. Resources, little mini-train sessions of services. Sometimes we do book reviews, interviews, anything and everything. We have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes come on the show and do presentations about services and programs and things we're doing here through the commission. We also bring in guest speakers from anywhere and everywhere across the country. And that's what we have this morning. This morning with me is Erin Silva. Good morning, Erin. Hello. And she is next door to us. Iowa, she's in the North Liberty Library. And she's, this is a presentation that was done last fall. There's the Association for Rural and Small Libraries as an annual conference. I highly recommend it for anyone for any size library, but especially for anyone in a small and rural library looking for your people. Your same, you know, people who are doing presentations that will definitely useful to you. And this is a session that she did there last year. They did their session virtual, their conference virtually. So it was online only. And this is a great session that Erin did. And I invited her to come on to share it hopefully with even a wider group. As I said, I recommend ARSL conference. It's going to be this fall. They're planning for it to be in person. See how things go. In Reno, Nevada. So look that up and see if you want to sign up and go with that. But today we're going to talk about changing the behavior game. And I'm going to hand that over to Erin to let you take it away. All right. Hello, everyone. My name is Erin Silva. My contact information is there. If you click on my name, it'll get you my email and slides and there's some supplemental documents. They will be shared when the link goes out for the archive recording. So you don't catch something. Don't worry. You will have access and you can always email me if you have any other questions. So I'm a youth and teen services librarian at the North Liberty library, which is in the southeast section of Iowa. We are about 12 minutes away from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. If that helps locate. So yeah, we're going to be talking about changing the behavior game. My alternate title is how one terrible summer almost made me quit my job and rethink everything. Yeah, it was it was traumatic. So we are going to learn about our library prior to 2018. Then we're going to be cringy and awkward with the summer of 2018, which seems like a million years ago now, but it profoundly affected the way I do my job now. I'm going to talk about a local organization here. Talk about social work, social work students and trauma informed thinking and learn about how that changed the way we do things at our library and then also talk about kind of what's next. So, prior to the summer of 2018. I started in this library in May of 2016 after spending about six years at a small library in Kelowna, Iowa, which served about 2000 people. The library I'm at now serves just under 20,000. So it's kind of a big jump went from three full time staff people to like 11. So our building also is part of the community center so we share a building with the rec center, which is interesting because there's different missions and different philosophies that happen on our side of the building and the rec side of the building, but we are connected with doors and hallway. So, a lot of people think that the rec center has a library we like to think that the library has a rec center and pool. And so what are the big differences between our building policy is that over on the rec side kids under 11 or fifth grade or younger. We have an adult sibling guardian who is 16 years of age or older with them at all times, which makes sense because they have weights and there's a little more dangerous activities going on on that side of the building. And the community at the time stated that kids under the age of nine had to have a parent or guardian with them. And I, I'm not really going to debate the merits of when a child is old enough to be in the library on their own but I thought, you know, especially from what I realized in my small town library there are kids that are mature enough to handle being in a library without supervision for a little while. And especially in our configuration, you know, parents bring their kids to swim lessons or basketball lessons or volleyball and, you know, some kids don't want to sit around and watch that so I didn't see why they couldn't be in the library if their parents were down the hall or even if they wanted to be in the library for, you know, some time on their own. So we talked about it and we worked on the policy and in 2017 the library eliminated the age barrier. And if a patron of any age, if they can follow the library conduct policy, they're welcome to stay in the library. And eliminating the age barrier was great because it lowers some anxieties for parents and kids and, you know, it's just it's a way also for kids to gain some independence in a safe space. But I don't think we thought all the way through with what that would mean in different ways. We had a core group of kids between the grades of like second to fifth or sixth grade who are with us every day after school until we closed at eight o'clock and a good majority of our weekend hours. And it was fine. I also instituted a snack program in the fall of 2017 after school because I noticed that hungry kids are often honoree kids as a lot of us probably are familiar adults get that way too. And I worked with some local organizations who rescue food from different grocery stores and restaurants. And they start delivering to us once a week for my snack program. And also it just made me feel better too because the kids that were here, like I said often would stay until eight o'clock at night so they missed what is typically the dinner hour. And they just worried that they were maybe not having anything to eat for the rest of the evening. So, so we had the snack, we had the no age barrier, and then summer of 18, and I'm going to talk about that. So, remember, we just changed our unattended child policy. She had a part time youth and teen services assistant, and she had just given her two weeks. So I believe she left at the beginning of June, right when summer reading was starting. My other children services partner in crime who does like the five and under family services. We often cover each other's programs. She had just left on maternity leave. And I was covering all of her programs, plus all of my youth and teen programs. I also had a pinched nerve. So I was in a lot of pain. And also towards the end of June we hired somebody to take the former assistance place and so I was trying to train them and so there was a lot happening. And then we had a very disruptive family move into our town. When I say disruptive, I mean they were a lot. They would lie. They were very, very loud. They would steal things and then deny it. They definitely were very loose with their language. All the kids and the mom and the mom's boyfriend. One of our grocery stores was opening a new building and so they were doing a lot of hiring in our library and they often had food out there. And the kids would, they figured out the locked codes on our doors and they would go in and they would steal the food. One of the teens, she took one of our like phone chargers and then denied it even though it was like in her hands. The mom, she called me a racist. It was just a lot. And our staff was definitely unprepared. We were overwhelmed and very reactive to this family. As soon as they would walk in the door, it was, you could just feel the tension explode. Nobody wanted to deal with them. And it wasn't, they weren't just disruptive at the library. They had the summer lunch program, the rec center, their actual residents, which they were doubled up, which means they were living with a family member. And so I think there was about 15 people living in this two bedroom apartment, which, you know, was not good for anybody's stress level. And, you know, because I was the youth and teen contact person, the staff basically was like, Erin, you deal with it. We can't, we just, you just deal with it. So the last full week in August is when school starts here and we were able to catch a very tiny break, but I'm not going to lie. I felt super unsupported and like by my fellow co workers, who were also feeling unprepared and how to handle the situation. And I felt very defeated. Like I was not doing my job right and there had to be a better way, but I couldn't get a grasp on it. So I was actually really happy when school started because things calm down just a little bit. And we, you know, realize that this quote, I'm not super big motivational quotes, but this one was stood out to me that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And that's what we needed to happen at our library. I was like, we cannot go on this way. It's not going to work. So we were doing some brainstorming and we started with, we're like, oh, what if we had a poster of like our library expectations that the kids could read and we thought, oh, that's a great idea. And we spent actual money on it like $100 to have it printed on poster board. And we thought it was amazing. And we thought, okay, this poster is going to change everything. And then we also were brainstorming about who we could reach out to for help. And that's where the United Action for Youth, which is a local organization in Iowa City came into play. And so we set up a training with them for a staff in service day. And that was supposed to happen in September. And so we're like, okay, felt kind of prepared. And our problem family left one day, they were just gone. And then they didn't come back the next day or the next day or the next day. And then we found out that they had gone back to the city that they had moved from. I, it was a relief. It was a huge weight lifted off of our shoulders and it gave us a chance to regroup as library staff and move forward. All right, so we're going to talk about the United Action for Youth. There's a link right there for you to run to check out their organization. They are a nonprofit that helps teens from all walks of life, but particularly teens that might be homeless, teens that are pregnant or new parents, teens that are kind of on the margins. And they do an amazing job with with their staff and their kids. And I just, I can't say enough good things about them. But one of their main tenants is called unconditional positive regard. And it's the definition is kind of right there. It's accepting others as they are without judgment or evaluation. So we can't judge anyone who comes into our space, nor can we judge or evaluate their home life. We must accept them where they're at. And that is such a huge shift in thinking, but it's super powerful. It's a, it's a big positive change. So the, the trainers, we, we did a lot of work on our lenses, how we look at things and how we might flip the script on those issues. So one of the, one of the things that was often repeated in the library and on the rec side was, well, those kids, ha, those kids, they should know better, they should know better, they should know not to do XYZ. But when you flip that around and take away the judgment and your preconceived notions about a person, you, you change that to something like, let me help you learn our rules. Because you can't just assume that they should know better because you have no idea what they know or don't know. And that was huge. There was a lot of like, oh, moments in that staff training. Some light bulbs going off. So many, we could have like generated, like, I don't even know, like a whole office building. So besides the unconditional positive regard is that the respect is not assumed. It's earned. And that means that, like, just because you're an adult, it doesn't mean that kids are automatically going to respect you because you're the adult. And that was also one of those light bulb moments for a lot of our staff. And that we're in the position to positively affect the lives of the kids we see. And we really need to take ownership of that. So, you know, another example of the different philosophies in our building as a whole with the community center side is that, you know, one side thinks that being in the building is a privilege. And then there's the other side that thinks, you know, you can come into the building because you're a human being and a member of a community and, you know, that's okay. But I'll let you figure out which side the library's on. So we were very excited to show them our poster that we made. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna show that, you know, I refer to it now as the poster of no, because if you look at it, it's no swearing or offensive language, no physical contact, no gym behaviors, no disorderly groups, because these are all the things that we were dealing with that we were trying to get them to stop doing. And, and our trainers looked at that and they were like, okay, well keep the library clean. That's great. That's a super positive rule. And then let the rest of it they were like, we let us let us help you make things better. I'm sure they tried very hard not to laugh at our poster because it's just like looking at it now I'm like, oh, yeah, that's just it's super negative. They also looked at our paint space. And I just wanted to show this off because I love it so much. We had that that wall was blank and not very inviting and so they, they kind of gave us an idea to have it muraled and painted and so we worked with the local art studio and had their students do this amazing thing for us. That's gorgeous. Love it. I love it. So after that UAY training. I started thinking that the path that the library was on was more aligned with the social work philosophy. And I'm not a social worker. So I thought, okay, well what can we do. And I, you know, being so close to a major university. I looked into their programs and they have a school of social work there so I thought, okay, maybe we can work with a social work student and see what happens. I contacted the head of the department and they were having a job fair in January of 2019. And so I went and I met a student who was completing her master's degree and she was super excited to work in the library she had a resume and was like, this is what I want to do with you and I was like, great. So it was awesome. I'm going to throw this slide up here so there's a lot of different places where you can go to find out how you can work with a social work student that top link is the social work guide. And it has a list of schools in every single state that have a social work program whether it's a bachelor's degree a master's or an associate's degree. There's schools in every state. So it should not be that hard to find one wherever you're at, even if it's not close. So definitely reach out to them and see if there's something that they could do with their students to help you. Social work students have to complete some sort of practicum placement and they can do a lot of work for you, especially if you're in a small library and you don't have a lot of staff and you do 800 jobs. This is super helpful. There's a whole person librarianship. That's another website where they infused social work skills and philosophies into library work. And Sarah Johnson she runs the social work library interns website and she has blog posts on there from different social workers and you can see all the different kinds of things that libraries are doing with social work students and social workers. So I think this is great. I know I've heard I know but the whole person librarianship. I've looked into that too. And this is something that's been mentioned a lot over in the recent years about libraries need social workers about and about libraries doing it and bringing an actual like professional social worker as part of the staff or a retainer or working with the library or whatever. But I never thought about this whole practicum and they need to do the actual students studying this needs something to do. And this would help a lot of the libraries like you're mentioning smaller ones that don't have the funds to hire a person. This is a great a great idea. You can get that person in to help your patrons and at no cost. Time and training and whatnot but that's awesome. So they yeah so don't be afraid to reach out and ask because I had no idea what I was doing and I was just like hey let's try this thing and it was it worked beautifully. So Kristen, she was amazing and specifically regarding the kids and what she did for me and with me was, you know, she surveyed the staff on their perceptions and needs regarding working with youth. She summarized those findings and presented it to staff at one of our staff meetings, and then she used the findings to create a staff training with me it was super fun. We did these really fun role playing scenarios, which is one of the things that I will share with you in the in the archive. So that you can practice because, you know, if, especially for our staff that don't work with the kids. I mean we all have interactions with them because all of the full time staff work a shift, several shifts out at the reference desk, the checkout desk. And so, you know, we do interact with kids even if it's not their primary job, but especially our part time staff are, you know, they shelve, they work the desk they do, you know, other duties as assigned. They may not have any experience working with kids and have no idea how to handle it. It was really helpful for them to do these role playing scenarios and they're based right out of the things that we dealt with on a daily basis with the kids that were there all the time so it was, it was super fun and I'm really glad that we got to do that. She also surveyed the youth on their suggestions for what they thought appropriate behavior in the library was, and then she used their ideas to create these posters. They were not fancy we did not spend $100 on them. But the goal was to use their suggestions and then to put them in a place where the kids could see them. And that is a way for them to have transparency within the library to be invested in the library and just to see their, their ideas in print. And they, they were helping to like color those. And then COVID but we'll get there. So she also assisted myself and our newest assistant, youth and teen librarian, because the, the dude that I had trained that was hired, he left and so I had to hire a new person. So anyways, Kristen worked with her to survey the, the teens perceptions of the library and their suggestions for programming. She helped apply for grants she brought in a speaker for the library and the other city departments to discuss secondary trauma. And then she also helped us create some programming for mindfulness. She did a lot and that's not even talking about what she did with like the adult services and then just like library in general. She set the bar so high I add for the other turns that we will have. So I'm going to talk a little bit about trauma informed practices, because this is kind of a key component to what we, we've learned as a staff and then what I have continued to learn on my own and what Kristen helped teach me and us. And so we had a training with a social worker to talk about trauma. Now, you can, there are many other webinars that I have seen come through about trauma and trauma informed practices. I am not an expert on this. I am not a social worker again, but I'm just going to give you the basics and hope that that will help the information comes from the substance abuse and mental health services administration or SAMHSA for short. And there's a link there that you can you can find this information and also the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, the child trauma toolkit. So that's all linked in the slides as well. I just want to jump into and remind everybody. If you have any questions or comments or anything you want to ask Erin about more detail about what she's already talked about or what she's got coming up, go ahead and type it into your question section. Or if you've done anything like this at your library, give us some comments and let us know how it's how it's gone there if you've ever been involved in anything like this. Yeah. So basic rundown. What is trauma? The too long didn't read version is it's an event and it's experience of an event or events and the effect. So anything that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening has lasting adverse effects on the individuals functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, and or spiritual well being is trauma. And obviously our problem family, they were enduring chronic trauma. And I, you know, in hindsight, I feel very bad about my thinking about them. But again, I was just so unprepared and it was just it was so much. But those that that poor family died. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say about that. But it's also important to know that what we experienced as a staff, you know, collectively and individually during that summer. It was secondary trauma. So we were still reeling. I mean, six months later from that family and how we were, you know, trying to deal with some of the things that we experienced. Yeah, it was a lot and secondary trauma affects, you know, doctors, other care workers, I'm sure teachers that deal with, you know, some of the more challenging students that they have so secondary trauma is a real thing and that's where, you know, you see all a lot of that, you know, self care and mindfulness and, you know, all of those things are really important to help you move through the trauma. So lots of different things can cause trauma. I'm not going to read all of these but the one that I really want to think about is the fact that, you know, we are coming out of a major global pandemic. And there is going to be trauma from COVID. Oh, yes. You know, people lost their lives, people got sick. I mean, I had COVID, not in August and, you know, they're still like after effects that I'm dealing with. Think about all the kids that have been online, offline, in person, not in person hybrid. So we all need to really think about the fact that every single person that is coming into our libraries or will be coming into our libraries are going to be having some sort of trauma from COVID. And I mean, that's that's a thing you're all staff are going to have that too. Yep, from how they've had to deal with it from the inside of all the changes that have been happening. I know I feel it already, you know, even though we are I've been back just finished up my vaccinations but we've just spent a year of being so hyper vigilant about safety, and it's hard to undo that. Yeah, it will be undone some traumas do last for a long for they don't go away. No. Yeah, so. And even like something that we may think as trivial, like, you know, moving, even just moving to a different house in your same city, or town, or, you know, the death of a pet, which may seem kind of, you know, when you're looking at these larger issues may not seem like that big of a deal but if it affects a person, and it affects their overall well being, you know, it's trauma and we need to be cognizant of that. Everybody has a different level of being able to handle things. Yes, we're that someone else's, your level is not necessarily going to be the same as someone else's and you need to understand and accept that. Exactly. Exactly. So trauma looks like a bunch of stuff. You can see all of these things but one, the ones that are in bold, I feel like are the ones that we were dealing with a lot in the library. So the impaired attention, memory and cognition, the protective of personal space and personal items, and then the blowing up when being corrected or told what to do, or, you know, the flip side of blowing up is like, you know, just like tearing up or crying when being corrected, where you think, oh my goodness, why are they being so, you know, upset or why are they being so reluctant to hand me their backpack. You know, it's a trauma response. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute too. I think that me as the staff person thinks is a really minor. Oh, yeah, super minor. And then you have this disproportionate reaction. And it makes no sense. But if you if you think about the that it's maybe in a trauma response, then it makes more sense and you can red flag for you to realize this really isn't about the backpack. I just meant back and thinking about it. Yeah. So, um, there are in SAMHSA's framework for a trauma informed approach. There are six principles. And it's important to remember that these are just principles they are not policies or procedures, but these principles can be used within your organization's policies and procedures. And, you know, one of the things that libraries talk about a lot is whether to be fine free. And that to me is a really responsible trauma informed approach to leveling the playing field for so many families. And it shows that, you know, there's there's empowerment in there. It gives a sense of trustworthiness and transparency for the library. And it also, you know, can can give people a choice. And these are all principles that are important for, you know, being a more person centered library. So the six principles are safety, trustworthiness and transparency, collaboration, empowerment, choice and intersectionality and intersectionality is just understanding that people are not just one thing. So myself like I am a woman, and I am also not very interesting, but I'm a mother, you know, I'm not just me. I'm also a daughter. So it's understanding that, you know, you may see somebody that, you know, presents one way but that they also may be, you know, not heterosexual or they also may be, you know, poor or they may be, you know, they may be biracial or, you know, it's just understanding that people are not just one thing. And then also that using a trauma informed approach, it means that recognizing that individuals who are experiencing or have experienced trauma are everywhere. They're not just in hospitals or mental health clinics. They're the person sitting next to you at the park. They're, you know, they're everywhere. And then again, you can find more about this at SAMHSA. So it's just important to keep these things in mind. There's a bunch of things you can learn about trauma, one of the main ones that I'm not going to get into, but it's the adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. And those are things that happen to kids, you know, zero to 17 that can have pretty negative outcomes for their overall health and can lead to a bunch of not so great outcomes for them. But the important thing to remember is just because you may score high on an ACEs quiz, which there are a lot of them out there online. Which I encourage you to go look at and take the quiz. Just because, you know, a kid may be prone to some negative outcomes or score high on an ACEs test, it doesn't mean that that is the way it's going to be for them because if you have a strong mentor or some sort of safety net, those results can be mitigated. And I think that's where libraries come in because we're the last free, safe space, pretty much. So what do we do to build relationships using a trauma informed lens in order to have a successful library? The biggest thing that we do is build relationships. This is the practical tips part of my presentation. And one of the easiest ways as to get to know the kids, this is the most effective way to prevent problematic behaviors and encourage positive behaviors at the very least learn their names and how to say them correctly. And it makes a huge difference. And I know this sounds, some of this stuff may sound like a duh, but, you know, it's a good reminder for all of us. And, you know, smile and look happy to see them, even if you are not happy to see them, fake it till you make it. Learn their names, their hobbies, what they're interested in, ask them how they are. And remember, start interacting with the kids, especially if you are completely changing your approach or if you happen to be a staff person that does not deal with children on a regular basis. It can feel super awkward. And that's okay. They, you know, they don't know you, you don't know them. It can be weird, but you just got to power through. And eventually they'll come around, especially if you, you know, if you don't act like you're holier than thou, or that you know best at all times, if they can see you as being a human, then it's going to go a lot farther. Because even if kids can't say it or don't say it, what they want and need is an adult who cares about them, you know, even if it's just a little bit. You want to catch them being good, which is like parenting 101. When you see them following the rules, you know, tell them say hey, Emily, thank you so much for walking in the library, especially if it's a kid that always runs. You know, or if they hold the door open for somebody or pick up a piece of trash that wasn't theirs, you know, catch them being good and praise them. You want to talk and behave calmly and politely, even if the kids are not, because you're the adult and you need to model appropriate behavior. They may not have anybody in their home life who ever models appropriate behavior, and that may be all that they know. So if you can model what you want, it's going to go a long ways. And it'll take a while, but eventually they'll get there. This is one that I struggle with a lot is being specific. So you can't just make vague statements like stop it, because it's confusing. They're not going to know what to stop doing unless you name it. So you want to say the specific problematic behavior you see and the specific behavior you want to see. So for example, running in the library, which obviously we deal a lot is, you know, say, you know, Andrew, please don't run in the library walk please. So we're asking them not to run and then following up with what you want them to do. A lot of times I just shorten that to hey Andrew walk please. And you know, sometimes you have to say it eight times but eventually, again, Andrew will stop running. And then you can also ask the kids, how can we fix it? So let's say two kids are fighting over a train at the train table or a computer game. You know, you can just walk right up to them and be like, hey, you know, Tegan and London, how can we fix this? What's going on? Ask them because then that gets their buy in rather than you just saying, okay, both of you, you're done. Get off the computers. That's not going to work. Get on their level, which basically means if there's a big height difference, lean down, kneel down, squat down, sit in a chair so that you're on their level face to face instead of towering over them because, you know, that that could trigger a trauma response from that kid. If they are in a position where they feel powerless and the adult in their life is always towering over them, asserting their power, you know, getting down on their level can defuse a situation. It isn't about you. Say that to yourself over and over. That is a mantra that I live by. It isn't about me. It isn't about me. Problematic behaviors are not personal. There are many, many reasons why a child might be struggling. They could have had a bad day at school. They could have had a fight with their friend. They could have problems at home. They might have ADHD or another diagnosis. They might be hungry. There's a million reasons why a kid is doing what they're doing and it's not about you. And the follow-up to that is it's not about you, part two. So just because a certain behavior is annoying you does not mean that it necessarily needs to stop. The example that I use a lot is whistling. I hate whistling. It makes me crazy. I can't. Oh, I hate it. But just because a kid is whistling and it's annoying me doesn't mean it's annoying anybody else that's around them or in the library. And so I will step back and I will look around and I will say, I will look and see like, okay, is this bothering other people? No, then I should probably let it go. It helps a lot to defuse a situation. Again, you need to work to earn the kids' respect. They're not going to automatically respect you, which again is not about you, but many of them have had experiences with adults who let them down. So why would they respect you when you're just like every other adult in their life? You got to work for it. You have to prove to them that you deserve their respect and that eventually that that relationship will grow stronger. And also remember that kids' brains are different from adults' brains. They don't mature that prefrontal cortex until they're 25. And, you know, they can't always regulate their behavior, predict the consequences of their behavior, understand somebody else's point of view or control their emotions as well as adults. And let's be frank, a lot of adults struggle with these things too. So keep that in mind. So some of the things at the library that we do is we have a thing called Question of the Week where we have a question, we have die cuts, the kids answer the question, they get a piece of candy. Super easy. We make them put their name on their answer and that also helps us learn their names. So it's kind of sneaky, but it also holds them accountable so they can't come in the next day and be like, oh, I didn't answer. And we'd be like, oh, I'm Ari. Yes, you did. I see your name right there. So that's something that we do. It works really, really well. The kids look forward to it every week. One of the things that we do also is we have our starboard. We have one of those in-stacks cameras. We take a picture of the kids. So these are all of our, well, used to be all of our regulars that were with us every day after school and on the weekends. And we take their picture, write their names down. I kind of did like a family tree so people would know who was related to whom and, you know, kind of where they were at. This was not out in the public. This was back in the staff area so that our part-timers and the staff who don't see them all the time, they could also learn their names and is really effective. The staff really liked it. I've had people ask me, like, oh, isn't that like an invasion of privacy? You shouldn't have kids up in the staff room. It's an area that nobody goes into except for the staff. And we told the kids exactly what we were doing with their pictures. So I didn't see it as an issue. I mentioned that somebody did ask the question. At first they thought, oh my gosh, this is out in the library. I hope not. Nope. This is where staff use only for the purpose of being able to usefully help these students. Learn their names and then, you know, if we notice like, oh, Gracie seems to be having a down day, you know, just being able for any of the staff to be able to go out and be like, oh, hey, Gracie, you know, you look like you're struggling a little. What's up? So it's empowering for the staff and it's also empowering for the kids. And then also it helped the staff who don't know how old these kids are. Our teen lounge is just for kids who are like in seventh grade and up. And so we have a lot of fifth and sixth graders that try to get in there because that's where the Nintendo switches. So this was an easy way to figure out who could be in there and who couldn't. So remember when we were talking about, you know, like the backpack and maybe like if you try to take a kid's basketball away from them and they get maybe an emotional reaction that you were not prepared for because that's a trauma response. You know, maybe that basketball is the only thing in their life that they actually own, and they do not want to get rid of it or have it taken away from them. So we have a ball deposit box that, you know, because we share space with the gym, we have a lot of basketballs being bounced all over the place. And so we asked the kids to put their ball in the box and we put, you know, tape on it with their name and they place it in the box and then they are, you know, they get to take it out of the box when they leave. This has cut down on so much behavior issues with balls being bounced and then kids not wanting to give it up. They know that their stuff is in a safe place that the staff, that only the staff has access to. We do the same thing with backpacks. If, you know, they keep leaving them unattended, we'll say, hey, you know, let's put your backpack in this designated space and that way it's safe. And then, you know, you can pick it up when you leave. It really does mitigate a lot of problems. So it's empowering for them to put their things in a special place. And, you know, it's again, it's a good trauma informed practice. Putting a positive spin on it like you're talking about the whole no poster thing. It's not a we're taking away your stuff because you're doing things like keeping it safe for you and you're keeping it safe for yourself by putting your ball here putting your backpack here. Let's just take that little spin on it makes all the difference. Yep. So I'm going to kind of speed up a little bit here. This is the teen space door sign. So that's myself and Kayla. This will also be in the document so you can see what the little bubbles say. But basically the tenants that we try to drill into the kids and the teens is when you're in the library, respect yourself, respect the space and respect other people in the space. And it encompasses everything that you are trying to teach the kids. So it's just like what you can do in the team lounge. If they need something to let us know it has our faces on there they can always ask for one of us because we're always there. And then, you know, things that we tolerate stuff. It's right there. It's out in the open. We don't have to, you know, necessarily remind them we can just point to the door like hey, remember. So that it's helpful to have those kinds of things out in the open for the kids to see. I was talking about Kristen helping us with some mindfulness things. These are from the Big Life Journal, which you can find online. And they're just there. They're called brain breaks. And it's basically a way for kids to calm down. So sometimes if a kid is definitely acting out or having some issues before we result or before we end up. Our goal is to never kick a kid out of the library unless we absolutely have to. So these are like good interventions to get them to calm down in order to let them stay at the library. They're really easy. They're, you know, super simple things that you can do with kids, five finger breathing, you know, five senses scavenger hunt. It just helps round them and, you know, where they're at take their mind off the issue and then you can actually talk to them. You're never going to get to this mindful brain break unless you've already established some sort of relationship with them. So you've got to get that relationship building in there first. And then when you whip out these brain breaks, they're not like, oh my gosh, you are so weird. What are you even talking about? I'm not doing that with you, which they may say when you have a relationship with you, but they'll actually do it with you. Not the teens. This is definitely for like grade school, age kids. The teens, you might be able to do some of these, but they're going to look at you like you've grown another head. I can put a link to these in the document. Okay, so sometimes you do the best you can. Kids are still going to misbehave. They're going to continue doing the thing that you said not to do and, you know, remember, prefrontal cortex not developed until they're 25. So in situations like that, we do have, this is my terrible copy of the behavioral flow chart that we use, which I will link to. But basically how the staff handles behavioral issues. We have kind of like a three, three ish strikes in your out kind of thing. It usually doesn't get to that. But, you know, we intervene. We have a positive approach. You know, we praise them if they stop doing what we would like them to stop doing and do the thing that we want them to do. You know, and then if it escalates, then we give them another warning. If we absolutely have to leave, have them leave for the day, we, you know, we stay calm, but we're like, you know, you're having so much fun, but, you know, the, I think this fun just can't happen in the library today so we ask you to leave, take a few minutes to get your things and say goodbye to your friends so that, you know, the kid can have some closure, and then say, we would love to see you tomorrow. And then the next time they come in, you follow up and this is super important to have good staff communication. So like if I am not there the next day, and I had asked a kid to leave, I could ask, you know, Kayla or Emily or anybody who has good staff to follow up with that kid when they see them, be like, hey, I understand that like, you know, or what what we normally do is like hey I'm glad to see you how are you today. Give them time to respond and then say, you know, I'm sorry that you had to leave yesterday that we had to ask you to leave so you know let's remember to keep your voice down or not play hide and seek in the stacks or whatever Thank you. And the reason why you want to do that follow up is because it helps to reestablish the connection with the kid, and it continues to build that relationship with them. And also, it gently reminds them about the expectations. And that way, they know like their self worth is not tied into their negative behavior the day before. And it helps to reestablish that connection and it's really, really important so that's the only thing you get out of this training, you know if you kick a kid out, make sure to follow up with them the next day and make it a positive. Another outcome that we had are these interventions with you a why, especially on the rec center side because they are much more prone to immediately kick a kid out if they're misbehaving. So this, it acts as a diversion. So a staff member from you a why will come in they'll meet with the team usually to talk about what happened to get them kicked out of the building because the rec center goes kind of scorched earth policy sometimes where they will be ban a kid for six months, which is ridiculous. And if they meet with this crisis worker to improve communication and their conflict resolution skills it's usually like three times, then, you know, then they meet with me and somebody from the rec center staff and then we let them back in. And it includes elements of, you know, restorative conversations and actions to increase positive interactions and feelings of ownership of the space, and, you know, relationships and then they also know like if they are having a bad day, and they feel like they're getting out of control. They'll have different staff that they know they can contact to help them get out of the situation. So again, it's about relationship building. We don't want to punish the kids. We want to help them. We want to be a safety net to, you know, learn those critical skills that they're going to need as adults as they move through life. So you have a question about that so now that you mentioned this about the rec center that you did mention the beginning. So the library has all of this the this type of work to do with kids. Have you tried to get the rec center to do all of that themselves they don't have that scorched earth. We sure have working the same way instead of totally different ways in the same, the same building. We sure have. We sure have. I can be confusing for the four kids. Well, and I will say that there there is a couple of staff on that side of the building that kind of get it. And they do try. It's a different culture down the hall and, you know, those guys, because I think they're all guys, except for the director, they've come to the trauma training. But it is different. And this, this intervention program is definitely helpful. And, and, you know, it's, it's a glacier progress, but they're trying. And I can see if you guys are working with the kids in this way that will hopefully help them behave behaviors everywhere in the world, not just in the library. Exactly. Okay, so just to wrap up. We had started these great things. We're developing our tween advocate group. So with our fourth, fifth and sixth graders so that they could be more involved in the programs and planning. And then we were hoping to move them to our teens because we do not have a teen advocate group. I can't get one to stick to save my life. We were starting to incorporate yoga and mindfulness into the beginning of every like program that we did. And the UAY staff was going to be working with us to start a youth advisory panel and provide out of school activities and groups, because they don't have a location up in North Liberty. They're located in Iowa City. And so we don't, you know, we don't have them up here all the time. And they were going to be doing a podcast. And we're going to have this thing during Juneteenth about what it means to be like, you know, a youth in Johnson County where we live and then COVID happened and everything changes. Yes. We're going to have kids in a year and a half. And so we're going to have to start all over when we open the doors. I don't know when that's going to be. I mean, our doors are still locked. We do appointments starting June 1, we are going to open our doors, but we're not going to have seating or unlimited, you know, hangout time or anything. We're going to have to start from scratch and try to remember all of these things that we used to do. And it's going to be a learning curve for everybody. But I'm, you know, I'm, I'm almost looking forward to that. And all those plans made finally. Yeah, so we're, we're starting to, you know, plan for some like outdoor programming in the summer. And hopefully, you know, I have no idea where our kids are. If they're even still in the area, a lot of them, you know, they may have had to leave because, you know, now that the, you know, the moratoriums on rent eviction, or, and like, our governors decided to stop unemployment benefits for COVID relief. So I have no idea what's going to happen. But, you know, we have these tools in place and I'm excited to, you know, reengage and re remind the staff how to engage. I do have a social work student who just finished her undergrad, who is meeting with me today. And she's going to be working with us this summer to try to get like a Mayor's Youth Advisory Council in place. So that's one of the projects that we're working on for the summer. So that's it. You know, please reach out to me if you have questions or comments or anything I'm happy to answer those types of things. Okay, thank you. And we did have a few questions throughout that I shared over. We do have one comment. The poster. So anybody just have any, I'll say right now, anybody has any questions to ask right now, go ahead and get them typed in. It's only 1103 and we don't cut things off just because we've hit 11 o'clock in the morning. Oh, okay. But if you have any questions, we'll answer them and go as long as it takes. We do a thing when I question or ask about go ahead and do that. We're recording everything. So if you do need to leave, we can, you'll be able to watch recording, but someone does have a comment. The poster of expected behaviors was great. Can you share that in some way? The one that's on the door of the. Yes, yes. There are all those little circles there, all those little sections that you had. I would definitely share that with you. I have it as a gay pegs, but it's easy to blow up because it's definitely, let's see, I don't know if I can get to all of them in here, but so, yeah, I can't blow it up. I'm so sorry. That's okay. Well, if you can get something to me for later, if you go along with the archives. Yeah, yes, absolutely. So it's basically like we don't tolerate, you know, homophobic slurs or racial slurs. Like, you know, we're not tolerant of anything like that and that will actually get you removed, like right away. And just things like that. But yes, I will definitely share that. Great. Awesome. We'll add that to the archive. All right, well, it doesn't look like anybody had any desperate questions asked right now. That's cool. As Erin said, her contact info is off that link on the first screen of the slides, and you're going to have the archived the slides available to you when the archive is available. So thank you everyone for attending today. Thank you so much, Erin. This is really, I think, very educational and helpful to people who have been dealing with this a lot. This is all pre COVID and something, as I said, social, having social workers and that kind of need in libraries has been becoming more talked about a lot in the library world. Well, yeah, you know, as much as COVID disrupted everything, I think that it's also a good chance to reset. And, you know, as we all continue to, you know, be fully open and reengage with our patrons, you know, having these kinds of tools in your back pocket, it's only going to be helpful. Right. Absolutely. And we do a question that just popped in. It was a long one he was typing. I can't see what people like in some text chat things or texting you can see when someone's typing I can't see that until the message comes in so. So we'll just answer this one last one here which is interesting question. If I understood it well a difficult experience you had with the kids with also involved a parent guardian. You're talking about the beginning your difficult family. The question is, are there any activities or policies involving adults that you've implemented I know you're the youth librarian so that's where you're coming at from this, but similar concepts could work there as well. Yes. So, nothing as flushed out as what we do with the kids and teens, but I will say, getting to know that mother. She gave me her phone number. I still have it pinned on my bulletin board as a reminder, even though, you know, she's no longer in my life. She, I was able to have kind of a breakthrough moment with her. When I said, it seems like you are really struggling, like, how can I help you. It was, you know, I didn't know what else to say to her because this was pre all of the training that we had had and, you know, taking her aside and in the back where our like staff room is away from everyone else that was really important. And, you know, she was like, I can't, you know, I can't. There was a lot, but she's like, you know, you can you can you can call me you can text me anytime if my kids are acting up and I will I will come and get them, which, you know, didn't happen but the the gesture was nice and we had a moment so from then on out I felt like I was more able to speak to her so, you know, with adults. If you have access to Ryan Dowd and his homelessness training. I would really recommend doing that training. He runs the largest homeless shelter in the Chicago area and he's amazing. Like every single lesson that he has, you can apply to library life. And he does a homelessness training for librarians and it's it's really worthwhile to help get you, you know, to recognize the signs of like PTSD and just like positive ways to interact with adults that maybe a little more challenging to work with. And also, we have an older patron who, you know, he used to come in every day to use the computers and he would complain very loudly to me about, quote unquote, those kids over in the, you know, the kids area because our library is loud. You just, it's not, it's unavoidable it's a large space and the hallway is loud and. Yep, taking time to explain to him like okay so after school at three o'clock. It gets much louder and if there's a way for you as you know, a retired person to come in at, you know, say 11 o'clock in the morning to do your stuff that might work better for you. And, you know, kind of help him calm down and make him feel heard, but also to let him understand that like, you know, this is how it is, and we're trying to accommodate everyone. I don't know if that's helpful or not but I really recommend Ryan down. The questioner says thanks. And I would think to the, your suggestion about getting working with a social worker student or something. You know your focus was of course the youth and teens because that's what you work with but you can do that same thing. If you think you need that kind of assistance with adults and kind of programming what what is, how does trauma work in an adult for adults. What should we do for them if that is something. So it's this is not just restricted to youth. You know, get it get a social worker or social student worker student to work with whatever you think your, your problem areas might be in your library or that you want to address. Absolutely. All right, I think we will wrap it up for today then really about, you know, um, so thank you everybody thank you so much Aaron I'm going to pull back presenter control to my screen, so I can wrap things up here for us. Here we go. We just have some thank you very useful always said I was wondering more about how adult behavior influences kids behavior and that would be something definitely to look more into absolutely. All right, so that will wrap it for today show thank you everybody for being here thanks so much Aaron for joining us today this is great to hear about even doing with this at your library sounds like you got a lot of good work done a lot of profit hopefully you'll be able to implement more of this in the next year or so. Yeah, thank you. So as I said we are recording today I'm going to pop over to our encompass live page where you can see here are upcoming shows but to access our archives there's a link right below all of our upcoming shows to archive encompass live. And most recent one at the top of the page this is where today's will be should be done as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know when the recording is here. I'll have a link to the YouTube recording of the show. Aaron slides the documents she's going to send along to me as well be there at the top of the page you should be able to access all of those. I'll mention here while we're on the page that we do a search features you can see you can search our archive through all of our previous shows. You can do the full archive or the most recent 12 months if you only got something current. This is because this is our full archives for encompass live and I'm not going to scroll all the way down but we premiered our show premiered in January 2009. So we have over 10 years worth of archive shows here. So just give a little tip if you are searching the full archives just pay attention to the original broadcast date for whatever you're watching. It's all on here showing when the first was done because things may change since then. Websites may have changed it service and promise services or products may have changed links might not work anymore. The location might become completely outdated but we are librarians we keep the archive things for historical purposes and we will always keep our full archive up here for everyone to watch. If you want to, but just pay attention to the date so you know, oh, you know certain things will stay on the test of time you know book review lists and things, but some things will will change over time so just pay attention to that as you are accessing our archives. If you do have a Facebook page you can say I linked to it over here. Where we post if you do like to use Facebook we post updates here's a reminder to log in right now for today's show speaker info when last week's recording was ready so we always update things on here. We also post onto other social media Twitter Instagram if you prefer those. It just look for the hashtag and comp live. That's what we try and use everywhere we post post anything about the show. We're mentioning mindfulness. We do have a show coming up next month. Mental maintenance. The topic might title might not let you that but which is actually about main mindfulness and self care for librarians. So if you're interested in learning more about that sign up for that show coming up on June 9 with Jeremy from Lincoln Parish Library in Louisiana. He's going to be talking about that another one that I have borrowed from the air SL conference and sign up for any rather shows hope you don't next week we're talking about going solo in the library would it's like to be the only librarian in a very small library. So please just sign up for that and they're coming shows and the dates you see there that we do we are here every Wednesday but are still working on some descriptions of shows in between there so you see some date that are missing. They will be coming and just keep an eye on our page here. And that thank you everybody for being here this morning. Thank you Aaron, and hopefully we'll see you at a future episode and come alive.