Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts written by the teens participating in the WorkReady Philadelphia service learning program at the Free Library of Philadelphia! Each week, you’ll hear from one of our participants about the important work they’re doing over the summer as Literacy Coaches to support youth literacy development throughout the Free Library system. This week, Janai shares her impressions of her first week on the job!

Last Week’s Training

By Janai N.

Last week, I officially started my new job with the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) working for the Free Library of Philadelphia. The branch I was assigned is in Eastwick. When I found out that I had training, I was extremely excited. However, when I showed up, my heart almost stopped. I couldn’t believe that I had been hired, and I was really nervous. I’m an introvert, so I have a hard time adjusting to situations in which there is a large group of people, and there were more than 100 who showed up for training just like me!

During the first half of the training, I received a TON of valuable information, such as what is good and bad touch and what to do when you’re taking pictures of kids. I also learned about Summer Reading and the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. One thing that stood out to me was that you could be a narrator for audiobooks in order to help people with disabilities. It touched my heart, and I am beginning to think about asking to become a narrator for those books.

After the morning half we had a break, and that was a bit tough for me. I didn’t know who to talk to, so I sat off to the side. Two people came over and they began to talk to me, so I felt a little better. Once break was over, we broke off into our small groups. I was placed in Group Seven, which included the teens who will be working in all of the Southwest Philadelphia library branches. In our small groups, we discovered that we would be working on a project that talks about how we are fighting illiteracy, so we decided to do a PowerPoint. For the rest of the week, the people in my group were assigned different slides and were given the duty to research on their slide topic. After last week, I began to open up some. I think that this is going to be a good summer!