Laurie Zierer, Pennsylvania Humanities Council
Teen Reading Lounge is a unique program created by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council (PHC) exclusively for teens ages 11-18. Unlike traditional book clubs, it’s interactive and reflects teen’s personal interests and love of popular series like Divergent and Harry Potter.
Photo Credit: Sunday Dispatch in Pittston – photographer Bill
Tarutis
The centerpiece of the program is the humanities which teach us about ourselves and our values through the stories and ideas we find in literature, history, and the arts, as well as aspects of everyday life like the foods we love to eat. Through discussion and hands-on activities that encourage innovation, collaboration, communication, and creative problem-solving, Teen Reading Lounge helps young people to understand
themselves and others and to build skills that will prepare them for a life in the 21st Century.
Because teens help design their program with librarians and arts educators, each program is unique.
For example, one library in a lower income area of SW Pennsylvania saw their program blossom into a community service project. Through a combination of the teens’ love of hands-onactivities and discovery that the characters in all of their books were looking for a place they could call home, the Birdhouse Project was born. Over several sessions, the teens painted and assembled birdhouses for the trees outside of the library.
On Arbor Day, the teens cleaned, mulched, and placed birdhouses in the surrounding trees. They also invited the local fire department and the community to participate in a project that had real-world implications.
Teen Reading Lounge helps to engage our youth by establishing libraries as legitimate and safe hangout places for many young people who do not have other places to go after school, on weekends, or during the summer. The program serves as a model for out-of-school learning.
The program teaches 21st century learning skills and allows teens to explore questions that are important to them.
From mid-February through June, PHC is launching Teen Reading Lounge in eight libraries in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Additionally, Teen Reading Lounge continues at two libraries in Allegheny County: Community Library of Allegheny Valley and the Allegheny branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. YALSA recently featured the Community Library in their blog series celebrating teen services around the county.
Teen Reading Lounge provides an important step towards helping young adults learn to better articulate and share their opinions and beliefs, engage with others, and overcome differences – all vital skills that will help them become civically engaged and responsible adults. Crafting an innovative and interesting program for teenagers is indeed possible — Teen Reading Lounge makes the process both rewarding and thoughtprovoking for library staff and teens.