Library program for teens on second year

Dale Clark Library is hosting a program called Teen Food and Fun, which occurs every other Friday from 3:30 to 4:30. During the program, teens aged 11-18 eat a free snack, do a fun activity, and then all teens there vote on the food and theme for the next activity. Mary Mollner, one of the librarians at the main library, started this program for teens to learn, eat, have fun, and connect, with “minimal adult interference.”

The theme of the meetings can go from the simple to the bizarre. Over the past year the program has bought candy from the world market to try, created a bubble mixture and compared it with the store bought one, and cooked a multitude of food on a waffle iron. They have also done simple things such as playing with available library technology (WiiU, three sizes of button makers, Ozobot robots), Pokémon games, and making sliders. During the Easter season, the teens played Angry Peeps, a game quite like Angry Birds, where you take peeps and set them up like towers, and then throw jelly beans at them to try and knock them down. The assortment of themes always is always student based. At the end of each meeting, Mollner will ask, “[does] anyone has any ideas for things to do in the future?” Usually she will hear several suggestions and then the rest of the group will give input about the ideas. Then they prioritize the ideas and put the on the calendar.

Mollner, the librarian who started this program, has been a librarian for 10 years, after working as a recreational therapist for 25 years. Being a librarian is a great fit for her, as she loves “working with schools…being surrounded by books… [and] answering questions on the phone.” She chose to create this program to combine two of her favorite things: teens and the library. This program aims for fun and food, but also learning about being an adult and what the library can offer. “I like to show them that the library is not dull and that its okay to make noise [here] because the library is always there.”  Her other goal for this program is that the teens that attend would learn about leadership and meet others.

Mollner began this program by asking herself, “What was I interested in hen I was a teen?  Eating food and having fun.” She then used food and fun as the basis for the club, with the mission to have the teens be in charge of everything. Although she tried to mitigate the amount of adult meddling, she still was running the program. Then about a year after she first started the program, she got a call from the president of Central Latino Leaders club, who was wondering about volunteering at the library. Mollner then suggested that they work with her program. Now many Latino Leaders members come to the meetings, they set up and clean up, and take the leadership role. Mollner says, “I provide the materials and the teens provide the topics and ideas.”

The one struggle this program has is attendance with an average of 5-15 teens. Mollner says its because, “no one knows about teen programing,” at the library. In order to raise attendance, she always has the group on the first floor in the young adult section so that people can see, and the teens are never closed off from others. Sometimes the library even gets jealous of the teens, especially on the day when they made sliders on the George Foreman grill to learn how to make hamburgers. “I bought three pounds of ground beef and they ate it all. I’m always so amazed on how much food teens eat!?

All in all, Mollner loves her Teen Food and Fun Program because it helps students learn new things, hang out with people, and eat food.