Day 12 (the final day!) of my Practicum

Well, today was the last day of my practicum in Minneapolis, and it was absolutely amazing - I attended the Somali Family Services (SFS) 5th annual conference at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, which had the theme "Civic Engagement: Local to Global." There were several sessions about various issues related to the Somali population at the local, national, and global level.

The first session I attended was about a grant-funded "student ambassador" program that SFS and the League of Women voters have worked together to provide in 2008-2009. 8 college students were selected through an essay process to participate, and funding provides each student with a stipend for participating. The students are working together to increase levels of civic engagement and political participation in local government. The students learn about how government works in Minnesota, meet with local government officials and influential community leaders, and learn to advocate for the Somali community through these channels. In addition, the students are given training and practice opportunities to improve presentation and speaking skills so that they can advocate more effectively in the community. It was really exciting to see the students so invested in giving back to their communities and improving their skills. I would love to try to get a grant for something like this in Columbus, and it also inspired me to think about how we could partner with local high schools with student ambassadors to work in the homework help centers. I think this could be a really effective way to recruit bilingual staff for the future and partner more effectively with community agencies.

The keynote speaker was Khalif Farah, who works with the UN Development Program in Somalia and has a lot of experience with the cuurent state of Somalia. He was not speaking as a representative of the UN, but rather as a member of the Somali community to talk through the role of the Somali Diaspora in rebuilding Somalia. He particularly focused on the tension between the internationally recognized government and the myriad of GNO's that are trying to provide assistance in various different ways - what he called the "civil society." It was interesting, and made me realize how complicated the situation in Somalia really is right now. I need brush up on my political geography!

During the afternoon, the first session I attended was a workshop about youth violence led by the student ambassador and some other community leaders. This was my favorite session of the day - it was an open dialogue among the people in the room about the recent violence and gang activity within the Somali community in Minneapolis. There were many high school and college students in the room talking passionately about the issues, as we worked through five questions:

1. What is at the root of youth violence? Who or what is responsible

2. What needs to be done to stop the violence?

3. Who has the power to stop youth violence?

4. What are the barriers to solving this problem?

5. What community organizations are currently working on the problem? (and who should be?)

After talking through these questions, the attendees worked together to come up with an action plan for dealing with youth violence, and different students volunteered to take the lead on various different initiatives. It was really inspirational to see the youth standing up and taking responsibility for tackling this difficult issue.

The final session of the day was about global warming and how it affecting people around the world, including countries like Somalia. People talked about the challenges that Somalia is facing with more droughts, shorter rainy seasons, and dried up water resources. This creates population shifts that bring different groups into conflict when they must fight for resources and land. One of the presenters from OxFam was actually an old college friend of mine, which was completely unexpected!

The end of the day was an opportunity to talk with different community members and exchange contact information, which I think was really valuable. Being in Minneapolis the last two weeks has given me some really great contacts that will be valuable sources of information and advice for working with the Somali community in Columbus.

I have to say that this experience was even more valuable than I thought it would be. My supervisor at Minneapolis Central, Emily Watts, has been a fabulous supervisor - she worked to find me really valuable learning opportunities throughout my time in Minneapolis and showed great flexibility. I really enjoyed working with her and look forward to keeping in touch so that we can trade new ideas. On that note, all of the staff members that I worked with at Hennepin County Libraries were gracious and helpful - even when they didn't have advance notice to prepare! I will definitely be back to visit, and hope that HCLIB and CML can work together more in the future to come up with creative services for immigrant populations. I can't believe my time is over - it seems like it just started! Thanks to everyone in Minneapolis who made me feel so welcome. I had a fantastic time!

Day 11 of my Practicum

Today was an interesting day - I tagged along to some meetings with my supervisor, Emily. In the morning we met with one of the Americorps VISTA employees to talk about some of the challenges she was facing with getting conversation circles off the ground at different locations and organizing a program called "People and Stories." People and Stories is an eight-week program that uses classic literature excerpts in an adult basic education environment - students read the stories together and then discuss the ideas, formats, and writing styles as part of their learning experience. They are hoping to offer this program in partnership with several locations (schools, learning centers, etc.) starting in January. They have offered it in the past and had good success....

This afternoon, Emily and I went out to Ridgedale for a couple of meetings. Hennepin County Library and Minneapolis Public Library merged about ten months ago, and they are working together to iron out all of the details involved in such a huge change. They are completely restructuring their staff and working to create a strategic vision for service together. I work in a large library system myself (Columbus Metropolitan Library), and it is amazing how each library system has their own culture and habits - trying to merge such different cultures is such a challenge! It would be like if CML tried to merge with Westerville Public Library - but on a grander scale since both systems are so large. To put it in perspective, CML has one Main Library and 20 branches, while Hennepin and Minneapolis combined have 41 branches and a Central Library (I think that is the number?). To make it even more difficult, they are in the process of hunting for a new library Director. In the interim, they have Hennepin's former deputy director acting as a temporary director - who I had the chance to meet this afternoon. Believe it or not, she said "Are you Nerdfighter Librarian?" - I guess she had picked up the blog through Google alerts since I tagged the posts as being about Hennepin County Library! It was pretty funny, and I have to say it was the first time I was ever referred to as "Nerdfighter Librarian" in person.

My first meeting was with the Partnerships division, and the discussion was about how the department should be restructured. It was interesting to see the "behind the scenes" discussion of this administrative group as they hashed out the issues. There were strong opinions on all sides, but the conversation was in an "atmosphere of respect and dignity" - as the healthy workplace initiative recommends... :)

It will be interesting to see how this works itself out in the future.

The afternoon meeting was about the merge, as well - they talked about merging the websites and plans for moving forward. There was a chance for staff to ask questions and for them to hear some updates about changes in general.

Before we left the Ridgedale branch, I got a tour of their automated check-in/ sorting area - I am so jealous. As a circulation manager, I could only dream of such a system. At my branch, we still manually check everything in and sort materials...I would love to shift some of that responsibility to machines so we could have even more staff out on the public service floor! Maybe after the levy passes (it will pass! it will pass!) we will do this when we renovate buildings, or go to RFID tags.

Tomorrow I attend the annual Somali Family Services conference and I'm looking forward to a great day!

Day 10 of my Practicum

Today was really interesting - I spent the entire day in the New Americans lab helping with the morning study lab and the afternoon helping in the English Language Learner class and conversation circle.

The Hennepin County library has a partnership with the Minneapolis Public Schools so that they have an adult ed teacher who is employed by the schools but assigned to the Central Library as her "site." She does an amazing job working with the students and is teaching a variety of levels depending on where the students skills are. The students all have inspiring stories and are so dedicated to improving their language skills - I am so glad I had the privilege to work with them today!

I forgot my camera today, so no pictures...

I am feeling a bit lonely since my in-laws are both gone now and I am bouncing around in their house alone until I leave Sunday. I don't even have Tony-dog to keep me company. :(

Day 9 of my Practicum

I didn't have time to blog yesterday because I had an extra long day - I took my mother-in-law to the airport before going in for a 10 1/2 hour day. Yikes. I was pretty exhausted.

I spent the morning at the Franklin Learning Center, which is in the lower level of the Franklin library and offers tutoring for English and adult basic education. They have been around for 20 years (!) and do some really great things to support community members who are trying to improve their skills. I got the sense that they are a real "family" and the students feel very welcome in the space.

In the afternoon, I had the chance to sit in on a partnerships meeting with a group called "SCIP" - Schools and Communities in Partnership." They meet regularly and have different speakers tell the group about services and partnerships - I got to hear about a joint partnership between several local police precincts and the immigrant community. They are working to break down barriers and misunderstandings between the immigrant community and police by encouraging an open dialogue and teaching each group to understand the other. Very cool! It was inspiring to hear all of the different agencies talk about how they could work together to reach common goals and serve the needs of their communities more holistically.

Yesterday evening, I went to a special event at the University of Minnesota. There is a new book coming out about the Somali Diaspora by Columbus, Ohio resident Abdi Roble, and the author was doing a exhibit of the photos and a book signing for the public. It was inspiring to hear him talk about the documentary project that took over 5 years to complete. I am hoping that we can recruit Mr. Roble's help working with the Somali community in Columbus - he was really wonderful to talk with and has a unique perspective since he has experience living in both Minneapolis and Columbus.

Day 8 of my Practicum

Today I started out at the Northside Learning Center, which is on the lower level of the Sumner Library. The NLC is run by the Minnesota Literacy Council and they have a dedicated space with computers and a photocopier, along with storage for many books. They use library meeting room space for the classes, and most of the classes are taught by trained volunteers. The Literacy Council staff members create curriculum that is used in each of the three levels of classes.

I had the opportunity to sit in on one of the advanced English classes (level C) - we spent the first half of the class reading a play out loud that was based on a Sherlock Holmes story and discussing what happened. Along the way, we would talk about definitions and pronunciation of tricky words or phrases. The second half of the class was more focused on grammar and vocabulary - today's lesson was focused on the uses of the terms "never, seldom, rarely, often, usually, and always."

I spent the second half of the day at Central Library and met with a staff member from the collection development department to talk about the challenges of ordering foreign language and ELL materials.

I finished my afternoon meeting with my supervisor about the "Recent Immigrants" section of the web site that I have been working on. I am making recommendations for merging the MPLS and HCLIB "Recent Immigrants" sections into one introductory page. I got some good feedback and look forward to making some adjustments and additions. I am hoping to be able to take a second draft to a conversation circle later this week and see if we can get some feedback from recent immigrants during the session.

I am done with 60 of my 100 hours - only 40 to go before Saturday!

Day 7 of my Practicum

Well, it's going to be a short blog post today - I am really exhausted. I didn't have to go into the library today, but I worked on the website project for about 5 hours and my head is feeling pretty rotten. I am scheduled to share what I have so far with my supervisor tomorrow, so I needed to get quite a bit accomplished.

I did take a break this afternoon to go to a little town called Wayzata with my mother-in law, and we sat by the lake drinking coffee and talking. It was a nice break, and it gave me the break I needed to keep going on my work. We stopped to see the Wayzata library, but it was closed - it looks out over the lake and has a lovely outdoor courtyard for people to sit and read in the fresh air. Very nice!

My favorite PostSecret postcard...

I had to take a picture of this postcard for my mother-in-law...who walks her dog, Tony all the time... and should have thought of this earlier when he was a puppy!