Bleach spray T-shirts

The other week my anime club had a "Bleach" day where we made Bleach spray T-shirts. You take a 50% concentration of bleach and water and spray it over the shirt. You can make a design out of contact paper and when you spray the solution over the contact paper and then remove it, it makes as design as in the first picture where the teen cut out a dragon design.

With teens you do have to be careful with such dangerous chemicals. I had to stop one teen from trying to sniff the solution and another one from pouring so much on the shirt that it almost ate through the material. Aside from having the auditorium smell like a public pool, it was a fun and easy craft.

Ninja for Hire

The other week we had a very special guest for anime club...a ninja! I found him online, his online ad said he was a "ninja for hire" and would do just about anything. I hired him not knowing exactly what to expect.

When I was sitting at my desk waiting for the ninja to show up, a policeman entered the library and asked for me. When I confirmed that I was that person, he said "There's a guy dressed in a ninja outfit with all these weapons in a car outside the library. He says he knows you. Is this true?" The policeman had a very concerned look on his face. I guess he thought the ninja was going to attack our library with his katana and shurikens. I confirmed that I did know the ninja and "Jon Ninja" came to set up.

Mr. "Jon Ninja" really did know his stuff. He knew ninja history, moves, information about weapons etc. The kids were in awe of him. For the activity I had all these cut-in-half pool noodles that they could use as swords. The ninja carefully taught the teens how to fight with them, showing them defensive moves etc. But when he let them loose they just walloped each other over the head.

Pick up the Buckets!

In some anime school dramas when a character misbehaves in school they are forced to hold up water filled buckets as punishment. Up until the 1970s teachers in Japan would discipline their students this way and it made its way into popular culture. The water bucket punishment is the equivalent to the "dunce cap" in Western cartoons.

I had my first anime club meeting this week and since my anime teens are very loud and crazy I thought a way to discipline them would be to use the bucket punishment. I brought two small buckets and filled them up with water and informed them (in a kindly manner) all at the beginning if there was misbehavior someone would have to hold the buckets. The teens thought this was very funny and immediately started competing to hold the buckets. Soon however, the girls found out the buckets were very tiring to hold and stopped but a couple of boys kept at it presumably to impress the ladies.

I only ended up using the buckets as punishment once when a girl did not get off our auditoriums piano... a big no no. I told her "pick up the buckets!" Then all the other teens picked up the chorus: "pick up the buckets!" She dutifully complied. I don't know if the water buckets had the intended effect I was looking for but they did provide some amusement.

Verbal Judo

This week I attended a library conference down south where I presented two programs. One of them I co-presented with a colleague and friend of mine on the topic "Managing Teen Behavior." This is a subject that comes more and more into play nowadays with librarians dealing with teens adopting the library as a hang out place, and a place where they are left for hours until their parents come home. These teens are restless and bored and often cause problems for staff.

In our presentation we covered verbal judo, a tactical communication style used to generate compliance. Among the topics covered in verbal judo was "things never to say to a teen." Among them are "Calm Down", "You Never... or You Always...," "What's your problem?" and in my opinion one of the most used and awful of them all: "Because I said so." I am guilty of the "Because I said so" statement probably because it has been used on me. Whenever this statement is uttered the first response from a teen will be "why?" When you say "because I said so" you are not supporting your rules with logic and reason and thus will not gain any respect. After I studied these verbal judo techniques I made a promise to keep out "because I said so" from my vocabulary no matter how easy it is to say to an unruly teen.

Male v. Female Presence

Last week my anime club had its annual sushi activity. This year I invited the local high school's Japanese teacher, Cook Sensei, to show the kids how to make their own maki rolls and some bean curd thing that I cannot begin to spell. The kids were delighted and there were over 30 of them jumping and bouncing around, high on wasabi.

The noise level increased to a roar and after attempts to quiet them down with more reasonable tones I raised my voice to a loud shout above the din asking them all to listen to the sushi instructions. This quieted them down for like two minutes and then the roar increased to school lunchroom levels. Cook Sensei had had enough and with a huge, deep MASCULINE voice he said the same thing I did. This shut them up immediately and they stayed quiet.

I have noticed this same kind of reaction with the teens with my male manager. I will say the exact same thing to the teens, in the exact same tone but their response to my FEMININE presence is different than my manager's masculine one. The teens reacted to Cook Sensei the same way. People don't respond to female authority figures the same way men do. That's why no matter what I say to the teens I just won't get the same response.

Blissful Silence

I had a local manga artist come to my anime club last week. Now I have to explain a couple of things about my anime club. I love these kids but these kids are hyperactive maniacs. They are so revved up that they run around and scream and jump up and down every time someone mentions their favorite anime character or squeal and hug each other five times every hour. In other words, they are typical energetic teenagers just let out of school.

I warned the manga artist that these teens are a little "excitable" and that she should just talk over them and not be offended if they don't pay attention. Yet I was shocked with their reaction to her presentation. They sat...and listened...and were quiet...and even TOOK NOTES. I had never seen them so quiet...EVER! They were so into her instructions on making manga characters and they asked questions too. Of course near the end of it chaos resumed but for 30 brief shining moments, I sat down and relaxed peacefully in blissful silence as for the first time the teens actually shut up.

Teen Hackers

A couple of weeks ago we discovered a group of teens looking at porn on our catalog computers. The thing is, there should be no way they can access the internet on those computers. We clicked around the catalog and tried to figure out how they did it. Finally, we discovered that someone ELSE had figured out how to get on the internet and if you clicked on this arrow it would give up a page history. On this page history was a porn site that had been accessed by the original hackers and the word had apparently spread among the teens that this particular catalog computer had a direct line to this porn site. We still don't know how they originally got on the site. Our tech guys haven't figured it out.

I was telling my husband about this the other day and I said that no filters, banning, rules, punishments or anything will keep a teen away from porn if they truly want to get to it. This is just another example of that. In some sense you have to admire their cleverness and fortitude. If only they would apply it somewhere else.

Beach Party in December

For my last anime club I decided to have a "Bleach Beach Party" for no other reason than that the two words rhyme. At the words "beach party" the girls in my club immediately asked: "Can we wear our bathing suits?" I immediately thought of 14 year old girls walking around in bikinis in the library with all our leering older male patrons. I put a stop to that train of thought but the girls were disappointed.

At this "Beach party" I decided to have the teens make their own smoothies. I bought strawberries, blueberries, orange juice, vanilla ice cream and bananas in bulk from Costco and let the kids have at it. But I specifically told them that I would control the blenders and that I would do the pouring. This of course was ignored by most of the 30 teens scrambling for smoothies. So the inevitable happened: one teen poured smoothie all over the blender, table, and their hands.

At the same time some of the girls got it in their head that they would put makeup on the boys. One boy consented and so the girls assumed that ALL the boys would want eyeshadow, eyeliner, base, mascara, the whole works, slathered on their face. While I was trying to deal with the smoothie situation girls were forcefully pushing boys to the ground so they could apply makeup. One boy was crying "no, no, no" as three girls pulled on him. So I had to rescue these hapless boys from the girls and explain to them that not every boy wants makeup on their face. Once again, I disappointed the girls who if they had it THEIR way would be dancing around in bikinis putting makeup on every boy in the room.

Sparkly Teens

It's been a while since I've posted! Things have been so busy.

Anyways, I had an anime club meeting this week and we were having a Death Note day. Death Note is a popular manga turned anime that's about a notebook where if someone's name is written in it that person dies. So I had the teens decorate their own mini Deathnote notebooks. I had paint, stickers, fabric markers etc all laid out for them.

I had also bought glitter spray as a finishing touch. The girls were extremely excited about the glitter spray and they liked making their notebooks sparkle. I carefully supervised the using of the glitter spray because it is similar to spray paint with toxic chemicals. However, my attention wavered for a minute because there was a commotion in another part of the room and I left the glitter spray for a moment in the hands of 14 year old girls. Big mistake. I turn around ten seconds later these girls are spraying these toxic chemicals on their hair and all over their bodies just like it was a perfume. I had to snatch the glitter spray up and lock it in the closet. Thank goodness that we only had sparkly teens and not half blind ones.

Cosplay!

At my anime club the other week we had a cosplay. I was hoping more would come and dress up but as I've learned working with teens, they have very short memories and if you tell them something at a meeting two weeks before they are most likely to forget it. However, some remembered and we had fun playing anime charades. They were screaming and laughing so hard (teen girls have this scream that is a particular pitch that can't be duplicated by anyone else) that by the end of it my ears hurt.

I even dressed up for the cosplay the other week. I wore cat ears, a black shirt, black leather skirt, fishnets and black leather boots. I found the fisnet stockings extremely uncomfortable. My feet were in pain in those boots by the end of the afternoon. My coworker told me you're supposed to wear little socks with the fishnets so they don't hurt your toes so much. It's amazing the things you learn at the library!

Chopstick Races

This week for my anime club's first meeting of the school year we had a chopstick program. For the last few weeks I have been sneakily stealing chopsticks from the local Teriyaki Bowl each time I go. I would go up to refill my drink and slip several pairs of chopsticks down my purse. After a few visits, I got 22 pairs of chopsticks. I was ready for the races.

I divided the teens into two lines and set an empty bowl at the end of the line. Then at the other end was a bowl full of mini marshmallows. The teens were to take a marshmallow with their chopsticks and then pass it to the person on their right down the chain and into the empty bowl. This proved to be difficult and I had to reprimand a few teens for their cursing. So then they decided to curse in Japanese, and I had to reprimand them again.

Eventually they got into it and we did the race a few times before they had enough and wanted to resume eating the food I brought with their chopsticks. I made a bowl of jello for them to eat just to watch them struggle to pick up the wiggly stuff with their chopsticks. The challenge of the jello only spurned them on. It was an entertaining and successful afternoon especially considering that some of the teens wanted to throw their chopsticks and no one's eye got put out.

Two Week Accent

I was talking to a cute teen girl at the library the other day. She was talking to me in a British accent. She has never stepped a foot in England in her life. I asked her why she was speaking in a British accent. She said that she had been speaking in the accent for a week and that she had a week to go. She was convinced that if she spoke in the British accent for two weeks straight it would stick.

I know that people say that you can develop a habit in two weeks but I do not believe you can develop an accent in two weeks. I did not want to burst this girl's bubble since she was working SO hard at it so I just smiled and said, "Wow, you're really good." I'll see her this week and we'll see if it "stuck." I'm more than doubtful.

Buttons, Buttons, Who's got the Buttons?

For my anime club activity a few weeks ago I had a button maker and I had the kids make their own buttons. I printed out numerous anime pictures they could choose from, some kids printed out their own pictures and others drew their own button designs. Then they cut out the circles handed them to me and I pressed them into the button maker. After the end of it I had blisters on my hands from all the buttons.

I must have made a 100 buttons for all the 20-30 kids that showed up. They all wanted several buttons. I found out after an hour into it that I was running out of the button backs, when I had only about 6-7 left I told the group that I could only make buttons for those who did not have any or only had one.

There was a girl (not the girl pictured) who was pressed next to me and had five buttons but insisted on more. She pleaded with me for more buttons and I explained to her that I could not make any more for her since I was running out and some people had not gotten any buttons. She continued whining. I explained again: "It's not fair for me to make you more buttons when some people don't have any buttons and you have five already." This did not seem to make logical sense to her and she pressed right up on me in my face and got aggressively whiny begging me for more. After 4-5 times of telling her "no" she walked off in a huff and got angry, completely forgetting all the 5 buttons I had made for her before. The week afterwards she gave me cold silence.

I understand that this is typical "me", self-gratifying adolescent behavior. But it still did not ease my annoyance. This girl is going to be disappointed in life when she discovers she doesn't get everything she wants.

Suicide Poem

This week I was a judge for a system-wide teen poetry contest. Almost all the teen poems were dark and "angsty" but one poem stood out from the rest, it was entitled "Suicide." The poem detailed the way this teen wanted to die and how much they wished to kill themselves.

I was disturbed by this poem and started contacting the other judges in the contest about it. To my surprise, they did not share the same reaction. One said she was not disturbed by the poem and another said that the teen was just "angsty" and being emotional. I insisted that this poem was a suicide threat and should be taken seriously but while I found agreement among my immediate coworkers the others who had judged the poem saw the situation differently.

I knew I could not just sit still and do nothing so I took the poem up to administration. They took the poem seriously and told me to contact the writer and provide them with the number of the employee counselor. I did this and also gave the writer the suicide hotline number. I have not heard back from this individual but I could not help from being unnerved from the whole incident. Have some of us as librarians become so jaded that we dismiss a teen's wish for death as "angst"? It is true that teens write depressing prose every day but it is also true that teens kill themselves every day.

Four Little Words

I am turning into my parents.

The other day there were a group of rowdy teens who needed to be shown the door. I approached them and told them to leave the library and welcomed them to come back the next day. Of course, teens want to know WHY they're being punished so they questioned me "Why are we being kicked out?" I answered the way my parents would always say "Because I said so."

The most infuriating four words a teen can hear is "Because I said so." This is because those words leave no room for argument. The adult's word is law and there will be no debate. Teens love to debate and if they can get you to explain why they're being disciplined they will try a weasel a way out of the punishment any way they can.

I heard those four little words frequently as a teen and they made me want to bash my head against a wall. Now here I am using them against others. I have truly joined the ranks of uncool adulthood.

Sushi!

Last week for my anime club I brought in a professional Japanese sushi chef to demonstrate to the teens how to make sushi. He made cucumber rolls, California rolls, hand rolls and there was something else that I can't pronounce or spell if you paid me. Sushi is not something everyone likes, it's kind of an acquired taste. However, these teens gobbled up roll after roll of it.

I'm glad they enjoyed the sushi. It's good to expose the teens to something other than cheeseburgers, Red Bull and those flaming hot Cheetos (where they come in and spread Cheeto dust everywhere.) It was also fascinating watching the chef roll the sushi in his special bamboo mat. Making sushi truly is an art. I just hope the teens don't expect me to feed them like this all the time. I already had a teen ask me the other week for a cheeseburger...

Chocolate Fun

We had a "Chocolate Fun" activity last week with the teens. During it we had the teens make art with chocolate syrup and Q-tips. You can see some of their work above and another picture in the slide show.

Some other "chocolaty" activities we had were "Don't Eat Pete" where you can win lots of M and Ms, a cake walk with Reeses peanut butter as prizes, chocolate trivia musical chairs and a chocolate dipping station. The kids were way revved up on sugar running around and giggling with syrup smeared around their lips. One boy ran in circles yelling "I love chocolate!" and ate seven or eight chocolate cookies by himself. The kids have asked when we're going to do it again. I was telling my friend about the chocolate activity we had at work, she works in the health field bent over test tubes all day and she told me, "I can't BELIEVE you get to do that at work!" She's right, I'm pretty lucky to work at a place where I can eat chocolate dipped marshmallows and get paid for it.

Teen Violence

This week was a sad one when a boy from the local high school up the road was shot and killed by his fellow students. He was only 15 years old. The shooting was gang related. The teens that came to our library were affected in different ways. Some were subdued and in shock, putting pictures of the dead teen with "You're in our hearts" on their notebooks. Other teens from the high school thought the whole situation and the media coverage was cool and one girl told me she wished she was disappointed she didn't get to see anything because the school was in lockdown.

The reaction from some teens that "violence is cool" was the exact same kind I saw when I was in high school during the Columbine massacre. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students while wearing dark trench coats. Some students at my high school thought this was cool and started wearing dark trench coats to school to show that they were "dangerous." The trend spread and more students wore the trench coats leading the principal to institute a school-wide trench coat ban.

I guess we can't really completely blame teens for thinking "violence is cool." They are raised with their gangsta heroes glorifying shootings and movies and TV with death all the time. Let's just not hope, as in this unfortunate case, that other students realize in real life, there is nothing cool about young students dying before their time.

I'm Famous!--Not Really

I almost forgot to mention that last month a reporter came by to take pictures of my anime club for the Salt Lake Tribune. That was the time we were making anime shrinky dinks. They also asked me questions about teens in the library. They put the article in the paper a bit ago:

Here's the link: Libraries get rad for teen audiences

My pictures in there with some of my teens but after all the questions they asked me about teens they never quoted me once. Perhaps they wrote the article first and then took the pictures, or I'm just not very "quotable."

Kicking out Teens

My manager has been gone for the week and will be in and out for a while and I have been placed in charge of the library in his absence. This means that I am the official toilet unstopper and also that I am going to be the person kicking the teens out of the library. Now I have kicked many teens out of the library but my manager and a former employee have been a great help in that. Now it's up to me and this week 13 unruly kids have been booted out into the cold.

In case anyone out there has troubled teens and needs help disciplining. Do not be afraid of kicking them out of the library. Like a bad penny, they will turn up again the next day. Here is a step by step instruction for any librarian needing some help getting those teens out the door.

1. Make sure they all know the rules and which rules are "kick-out-able"; this can be done through an orientation at the beginning of each semester
2. Give them a warning first: "You are being too loud and if I have to come back here one more time you will have to leave." Some offenses like hitting don't get warnings.
3. When you kick them out be sure to let them know that they are welcome to come back the next day.
4. Escort them to the door and make sure they leave the premises. Do not let them go to the bathroom or get a book. Make them leave immediately.
5. Do all of this in a firm, clear voice but do not be condescending.