Hey Michlib! 

I  am so lucky to work at a branch that gets flooded with teens from our middle and high school every afternoon. We get around 50 of them and a small subset have decided that volunteering at the library is cool. I'm all for encouraging and supporting this behavior (after all, it's how I started in this profession 15+ years ago) but at the moment, their "help" is requiring more energy than the value they are producing- usually we get a pack of 5 of them a day, with about 20 kids participating. Most volunteers are in middle school and we'd love them to get them on the path toward being pages once they are of hireable age, or general entry level employable skills. We have an active Teen Advisory Board, but this is a different group of kids.

They're currently volunteering because they're bored after school, waiting to go home. We have them dusting shelves, wiping down computers, and sharpening pencils, which aren't exactly captivating tasks, but things that we always need help with. We've come to the point where we need to formalize how things are done, so that it takes less staff effort on a daily basis, which is where I need your help!

What tasks do you have your teen volunteers do?

How do you balance needed tasks with "cool" tasks?

How do you train them?
How do you step them up to more responsibility?

Do you have any rewards for them?

Are they involved in summer reading?

Do you have paperwork or info sheets you'll share with me?

TL;DR: Any advice on wrangling teen volunteers is welcome! Please send off list, and I can compile and send out if requested.  

Thank you for your wisdom!

Mari Thurgate

Monroe County Library System, Bedford Branch