Community Engagement

Creating a strong partnership with your local middle and high school teachers is a great idea, and can help you design library programming and services that complement what your patrons are experiencing at school. Here are some potential topics that you can talk about with your local teachers:

• Important research assignments that students have during the year: The library can help with creating book displays on relevant topics during the assignment period, and by making sure that the library collection has ample materials to support student research.
• Topics or trends that have come up in school that students have expressed interest in: Programming ideas could potentially come from this!
• Career and college guidance resources: If these topics are covered at school, it would be helpful to know in what capacity, so that you can provide resources that supplement.
• Media literacy: Offering support and resources to help students find reliable sources and evaluate results.

In general, keeping lines of communication open with school staff can only better inform your offerings, and provide you with another channel of suggestions and ideas.