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7/3/08 20:44![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyIt's strange.
For months I couldn't get any traction whatsoever with YA programs. I'd get three people, four people, zero people. I'd get nine-year-olds and eleven-year-olds if I got anybody (well, this is still basically true). Tonight, I had fourteen kids in to make duct tape wallets, and I was glad it wasn't any more because it's like herding cats.
I wasn't surprised when I had more luck with the library in Garner - it's just more middle-class, and it's religious in such a way that all the religious homeschoolers make the library a big part of their education, and you have a certain level of captive audience for a program. I can't identify big obvious differences here. The community here is not so dissimilar from the library where I worked before... except that you can actually get pre-teens to come and do crafts with you.
I tried really, really hard not to take my failure personally. But I also didn't really have the kind of training & mentorship that could've led me to assess what I was doing wrong and what I could do better and what I just couldn't control. That's why I think I'd be okay coming to that library, or a similar one, maybe five or ten years in the future. In the meantime it's really good to have a little less insecurity gnawing at me.
For months I couldn't get any traction whatsoever with YA programs. I'd get three people, four people, zero people. I'd get nine-year-olds and eleven-year-olds if I got anybody (well, this is still basically true). Tonight, I had fourteen kids in to make duct tape wallets, and I was glad it wasn't any more because it's like herding cats.
I wasn't surprised when I had more luck with the library in Garner - it's just more middle-class, and it's religious in such a way that all the religious homeschoolers make the library a big part of their education, and you have a certain level of captive audience for a program. I can't identify big obvious differences here. The community here is not so dissimilar from the library where I worked before... except that you can actually get pre-teens to come and do crafts with you.
I tried really, really hard not to take my failure personally. But I also didn't really have the kind of training & mentorship that could've led me to assess what I was doing wrong and what I could do better and what I just couldn't control. That's why I think I'd be okay coming to that library, or a similar one, maybe five or ten years in the future. In the meantime it's really good to have a little less insecurity gnawing at me.