October 28, 2009 Meeting

The Teen Council met on October 28.

• We reviewed the Shelfari site and talked about the reading celebrations. The Reading Ram Cafe Dessert Extravaganza was a huge success. Our assistant principal, Ms. Massie, did a fabulous job as a waitress. The next reading celebration has already begun: Feed the Need to Read. Students may enter the contest for every book that the read. Winning readers will be invited to a pizza party on December 9, 2009. Another component added to this latest celebration is that each time a teacher brings a class to either check out books or do research, that class will be entered into the drawing. The entire class could win a pizza party!
• The cereal collection for the Compassion Cupboard has been a fabulous success. We collected 129 boxes of cereal to be distributed by the Compassion Cupboard in November.
• The Council will start collecting children's books for the Northern VA Daily Holiday Book Drive.
• The group looked at pictures of the Sunset Hills school in Strasburg. The group will work together to help create an oral history of the school for the Strasburg Museum. Interested students will start to work on a presentation and interviews. (more information to follow). This is a fabulous opportunity for the group to expand their interest in reading and local history.
• Kaitlyn C. and Allison P. will work as co-leaders for the group.
• The school store is selling friendship bracelets from Guatamala and the council will be promoting them.
• Students broke into smaller groups and discussed books that they are reading. Reviews will be added to Shelfari.
• Each group leader is in charge of adding the names of the books to their main list. At the end of the year, each group will argue for the titles that they believe deserve a TC Pick sticker.

First Meeting of the School Year!

The first meeting of the Teen Council was held on September 28, 2009 in the library media center with approximately 35 students. The meeting included:

• Mrs. Bushman shared the Shelfari site with the members. Members will continue to turn in book reviews. Mrs. Stout has kept the SHS Shelfari site up to date and there are now close to 350 student book reviews. She has included tags for all major subjects and the TC Picks are tagged as well.
• Mrs. Bushman shared with the members the importance of advocating for the library and helping with the reading celebrations
• The TC Pick book lists were shared. These are the books selected by SHS students as being the best.
• Members created smaller groups in order to facilitate group discussions of books the members are currently reading
• Allyson and Kaitlyn will be co-directors for the council
• Allyson and Kaitlyn suggested looking into a murder mystery event as a fund raiser for the library. More research is to be done regarding this possibility
• The cereal collection community service project was discussed and members were encouraged to bring in cereal for the Compassion Cupboard
• Kaitlyn wants to pursue a warm coat collection community service project
• Lindsey asked about collecting box tops
• Group leaders are: John, Tricia, Brooklyn, and Allyson
• Podcasts may be used to add a new dimension to the book reviews
• The process of selecting the books that become "TC Picks" was discussed
• The meeting ended with door prizes!