And I'm very excited to welcome the team from "Storytime Underground" for today's webinar.
You're all in for a real treat.
Kendra Jones is joining us from here at the Tacoma Public Library in Washington, Cory Eckert from Houston, Texas, Soraya Silverman from Clark County Library District in Nevada, and these folks are really going to bring us to some great learning that comes through those "Storytime Underground" community.
Welcome to all three of you. 
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Oh, thanks.
I have the ball now.
Thank you for joining us.
This is Kendra speaking and I will be driving the slides today but we're going to start with miss cory.
She will kick us off today.
>> Thank you, Kendra.
I'm Cory Eckert.
I want to first welcome everybody and say thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be here.
I know sometimes getting into a webinar can be difficult in terms of just moving things around in your day.
So, I really appreciate it.
I know we all do.
I started "Storytime Underground," and storytime and -- what my vision was and what Kendra and I envisioned when we first started it two years ago was that we have a community where people were able to support each other.
So, you know, we started with a very strong vision that literacy is not a luxury and what we mean by that is that every child deserves access to literacy, especially that pre-K, zero to 3, zero to five access, and that the professionals giving that early pre-literacy intervention should be as comfortable as possible and have the best training possible.
We wanted to provide a community where people could do that.
We always say that we support each other, promote each other, and train each other.
Everybody who gives story time or uses services is an expert at something and everyone has something that they can work on.
We have a big community aspect, and then we also have the training aspect and we have a sort of advice aspect through ask a Ninja and we will talk about all of those as part of what we do as a community, "Storytime Underground."
So, when I started Guerilla Storytime, I was a brand new librarian.
I had never heard of a flannel board and I was tracking the library community on the internet and I saw cool things like Flannel Friday, but what I didn't understand was how oh, say, telling a flannel story could be useful to a child's development, literacy development.
So I wanted to watch other people who were masters of story time.
I wanted to learn from them.
I knew that I could read books and blogs and look at people's storytime plans, and I still wouldn't get as much out of it as watching other people actually do story time.
So, I very early on had pushed myself into some communities on Twitter with some really brilliant librarians, and I was having conversations with them about how we might be able to get everybody together and everyone share their skills.
So, what I did is come up with the idea for Guerilla Storytime and we will talk more about what that is and what it looks like later.
But immediately, Amy Kuster and Kendra said, yes, this is cool, we want to be involved in this.
The three of us had a vision for something that took that community of experts that we had gotten together and kept it going and made it something where rural librarians, brand new librarians, paraprofessionals, anybody would be able to get great resources for free from experts. 
And it just went from there. 
>> That's right.
Who is "Storytime Underground" since we got together sometimes people don't really remember or know necessarily that there are people behind "Storytime Underground."
It is this community that was created by real people and it started off with cory, myself, and Amy, and later on Brooke joined us and she has moved on and Soraya has taken her place as kind of the third original, I guess you could say, for storytime underground.
We have four new joint chiefs who we will talk about later on.
And I happen to know that one is actually watching this webinar.
Hi, and thank you for being here to support us.
The other part is you.
The community does not exist without all of you.
Even though we built the actual, physical virtual space, all of the content comes from the community.
It is not necessarily coming from us.
We are hoping to glean from the community all of your expertise because we truly believe that everybody is an expert in something, everybody has something to share.
So, what we hope is that after you watch this webinar, you will be inspired to get involved and help our community become even more robust than it already is. 
>> Okay.
Hi, everyone, this is Soraya.
I do apologize, I am getting over a cold right now.
If I cough, I'm sorry.
But if you see the Monty Python quote -- I love Monty Python --
but, you know, we're not necessarily wild animals, but you can be and in story time especially.
I feel like youth services librarians we put our heart and our soul into what we do.
It is such a passion that drives us.
We here want to make sure that you have as many resources available to you to help you through that process.
We are going to talk about different ways to be involved in storytime underground and we will go into detail for each of these.
We have ask a Ninja, one of the most popular features for our web site and our blog.
You can also become a guest blogger, and post throughout the year.
It is a great way to be recognized.
We have story time university, more of our professional development feature of the site and social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter.
And Facebook is huge right now.
Like we mentioned before, Guerilla Storytime, we will talk about how you can facilitate that in your own areas, in your own states.
And we have state representatives.
We will go more into detail.
First is ask a Ninja.
And this is really cool -- if you click on the link for the title, it will actually, I think -- is it clickable?
No, it is not, sorry.
We will have links for that available.
A feature on the blog where you can send us an email with a question that you have about any facet of youth services.
We've gotten questions about how do you control over-crowded story times?
What's your opinion on snacks in story time?
Any question you have really you can pose it to us.
Ask a Ninja, it goes to colleagues in "Storytime Underground."
We send out the questions to and they can answer and we choose a certain amount of responses each week.
It's nice that it is a little curated.
And it is also great because the Ninjas that answer each week get posted on to the blog.
It is a small way that we can recognize other professionals in the field.
This is probably one of the most used aspects of our blog.
>> Jennifer: This is Jennifer.
I want to as folks have trickled in after you started, I just want to be sure that people have their chat window open because we're sharing links that are being talked about, as well as encouraging folks to post questions and comments and answers.
So, if you don't yet see the chat box open, look for that chat bubble at the top right corner of your view, and click on that icon and that will open your chat panel.
And you can -- you can close or open any of those panels, but we want to be sure that your chat panel is open.
Thank you. 
>> Great.
Thank you for that, Jennifer.
So, this slide has a list of some of our blog posts, regular ones posted on the web site.
We also wanted to mention that we have guest blogging opportunities.
I want to emphasize that especially because if you have a topic that you think would be really great to talk about on storytime underground, you can send us an email and suggest that as a topic and we might have you do a guest blog for us.
Keep that in mind that we are always looking for new material.
This is a list of some of the things we had going in the past, ask a Ninja, coolest things, hey, why don't you, those are things we have had in the past.
We are actually adding some new cool features.
A couple I wanted to specifically talk about real quick are the fast facts -- 
that one is going to be really helpful I think for advocacy efforts.
The idea that we are going to post -- and we already have done a couple of these -- a quotation or a quick fact about early literacy, and we'll link to where we found that.
So, the research behind it.
The hope is that that way when you're in a meeting with your boss, if you need an elevator speech, you have something really fast to speak to them that will be catchy, that will stick with them, that will help you advocate for your community.
So, that one is really cool.
Also, we just started in, and it is not even on this slide --
that's how new it is -- Sunday storytime challenge.
The idea to stretch your storytime skills a little bit.
You will see those coming up, posted on Sundays.
The newest one, create or update a sensory based activity for early learners and share with the storytime underground community.
Even if you are not doing anything in sensory storytime, there are some links so that you can get started, inspiration for that, or you can add something or if you are doing something, share what is so great about that.
That is a new challenge coming up.
When we get to the storytime university, you will see a badge that will go with that eventually as well.
Now we're at Storytime University.
This is sort of my baby.
I really wanted a way for people to validate what they're doing professionally.
So, we all do lots of professional development things like watching this webinar is one for example.
Through Storytime University you can earn a badge.
It is kind of like getting a certificate for watching a webinar or doing other professional activities.
Webjunction is awesome.
They send you a certificate, but not every professional development opportunity provides something like that.
We were hoping when you watch a webinar, you go into the Storytime University place and you say okay, here is a link to the webinar I watched.
And you will get an email with this shiny little badge and you could show that to your superiors.
Look, this is how much work I have been doing professionally.
Before I get way ahead of myself, you will see a diagram of where to register for that.
If you have not registered, please do it.
It is super easy.
I do want to mention here that we use a free badging software, and as with many things that are free, there are sometimes glitches.
So, if you register and you never get an activation key and you can't seem to log in, please email us.
We do know how to fix it.
And sometimes we don't hear from people and they sit in pending for a while and then we get sad that you are not able to have fun in Storytime University.
Do sign up and register.
Some of the benefits are the validation.
It also helps track -- I sometimes forget about all of the things that I have done.
It is really helpful for me to know about all of the different things that I'm doing.
I can look back and say, oh, yeah, I got a badge for that.
Hopefully you will have skills expansion.
We should all learn new things, right?
But also we want you to stretch the skills that you already have.
Storytime ABCs, some are basic but some might be basic things that you have not done in a long time and you can bring that back.
And, of course, it's fun.
That is always a big thing for story time.
Digital badges, you can see them pictured there.
The way you earn them is by doing tasks.
Each one of the shiny badges that you see has several tasks associated with it.
For example, grass hopper badge, you would be able to start earning that one today.
After you finish this webinar, you can go to our web site and you can see there is a link here and Jennifer is going to share that as well, but you can click there and it goes right to the badge and you will copy and paste the link into the submission box and you earn the webinar task badge and you will be on the way to earning the grasshopper badge.
Five tasks associated with it.
Once you finish the five tasks, you get the big shiny awesome badge.
The grasshopper is the giant carrot at the end.
Each of these has various things that are associated with it.
You will notice sometimes they're a little bit Ninja turtle-themed.
We started to do that and decided that maybe they would get mad at us for stealing their copyright.
They still have some of that feel to them.
Samurai, you will -- some of these will be changing, too.
As you are starting to develop and earn your badges, make sure that you check back all of the time because we add new badges and change some of the existing ones as our featured blog posts change.
This is not a stagnant learning system.
It does evolve and change as we learn new things and come up with new professional development opportunities for you.
Once you go to the digital badges web site, you can click on everyone of these.
It will show you who has earned the badge so far.
Maybe you can compete with your friends and do whatever you want.
And you can see all of the different elements that it will take to earn any of these badges. 
Okay.
So, talking about our social media platforms.
Jennifer, if we could share the links for that, too.
Primarily we use Facebook and we have our Twitter platform as well.
On Facebook, it is immensely growing.
So, I sent these slides to Jennifer on Friday and we had about 4,600, and I think we got 70 adds over the weekend.
But what's nice about Facebook is that these are only early literacy-related members.
We thoroughly screen people who want to join the group to make sure that they're related to early literacy in some shape or form.
And it is not just libraries.
Primarily libraries, but anyone who works with early literacy or early education.
We have teachers on there.
We have day care and preschool professional.
People who work for museums.
There is everyone.
And that's so fabulous about it.
It is a huge community that resolves around youth services and it is literally everyone from all over the country and even all over the world.
I've added really cool people from recently from someone in Britain and someone from Japan, and it is just amazing to see how much is out there and how similar our jobs are, even across countries.
So, on Facebook you can go on there and check it out.
It's fascinating.
I love going through the feed everyday and seeing what kind of participation is going on.
But we literally get dozens and dozens of questions asked everyday.
And that is not just questions -- people will ask, hey, what's your favorite Teddy bear storytime.
Give me some examples.
You get people sharing their experiences too.
Share their successes or they're excited they started a new story time and it was really -- it had a good turnout and good participate.
People would share a craft that worked well or just ideas that they had that they thought would be fun, and there is so much to see everywhere.
Everywhere that's going on.
But I think what's also really cool is that we genuinely support each other.
Questions are posed, and you get -- you can get -- I've seen threads that have up to a couple hundred comments on it from people just saying, hey, I hope this helps here.
This is my experience.
So, it is amazing.
You get such a wide range of experience responses from all sorts of professionals around the country and around the world and it is really as strong -- you get that strong sense of community support and engagement.
I love -- I don't know, I love how social media can bring people together, and you really -- you can glean some really excellent ideas.
I have incorporated some things that I have seen on the Facebook feed that I just thought were really neat and useful for story time.
We have our Twitter platform.
We are building on it.
We have had it for a while.
It was a little inactive for a bit, but we have our new joint chiefs joining in and they have been great taking it over.
It is a good opportunity to connect resources and blog together and it is -- it is a growing community for sure.
But because "Storytime Underground" kind of originated from Twitter, Twitter is such a powerful tool to connect to other professionals in the field and build that networking experience.
We wants you to utilize either Facebook or Twitter or the blog in whatever manner you're comfortable with.
Get out there, start to meet new people and start building those networks and those relationships with one another.
>> I'm annoying about this all of the time.
You can earn a badge just for posting something on Facebook.
Woo-hoo. 
>> Sounds like somebody might still be muted.
>> It looks like -- Cory -- it looks like she might have got kicked off.
We will talk about this.
Tech stuff.
Guerilla Storytime, Cory talked about this a little before.
This is how "Storytime Underground" got started was with a Guerilla Storytime at ALA.
So, what she decided to do, as she talked about, she talked about on Twitter about really wanting a way to see people do the things in story time.
We do have videos -- before JayBerry was big, they kind of came about the -- there was not a lot -- to see storytime in action.
She came up with the idea to have the Guerilla Storytime and the hope was that it would be sort of advocacy.
Uncommons area of  ALA, anybody walking by would see the librarians, singing, laughing, having fun, so that people would know that doing story time takes development.
That it actually isn't something that we just wake up in the morning and like you know, I don't know, sometimes people just think we have them in our pockets and books and all of these things come out and it is no big deal.
But it takes time to learn the skills to do story time.
You have to learn different songs and finger plays and books and things like that.
We wanted people to see that.
Also, we were really hoping to encourage people to include early literacy elements in their story time.
That definitely it is a presentation and it is a fun experience phone our participants in story time, but also that it is early literacy, it is helping them learn the skills they need in order to to read and write down the road.
We include prompts in the Guerilla Storytime that talked about how would you use this --
the -- skills in story time to encourage people to share those and learn about ways to incorporate that.
Guerilla Storytime is a big group of people.
You can come and go.
You don't even have to have any experience.
As we mentioned before, everybody is an expert in something, whether or not you know it, you are.
So, you get around, you sit in a circle, and we have a jar.
In the jar are all of these little sticks, and on the sticks are written challenges and the challenges can be anything from share your favorite shaker song to this was always one of my favorites, a bunch of moms talking in the back of the room and they won't be quiet.
What do you do?
And you have to demonstrate exactly what you're doing.
Cory, are you back on?
>> I'm back.
>> Okay.
Good.
I will let cory take over.
>> And I'm sorry about that.
It hung up on me somehow.
Okay.
I think Kendra has probably covered a lot of the how-to of Guerilla Storytime, and the why.
We do it for advocacy.
To network, to meet other professional librarians and get to watch them because I think there is always something valuable about watching how somebody else does story time.
And there is also something valuable about watching someone else act out how they would handle a difficult situation like we talked about.
And, so, you know, Guerilla Storytime can be put on anywhere, and we specifically -- we do them at conferences in some shared areas.
So, at annual, there is an uncommons -- any state conference, there will be some area where you could do it in, whether it is a hallway -- we do it where other people can see it and also so that you don't necessarily have to put in a proposal for a program and have it go through all of those official channels when you're doing a -- when you're going to a conference, you present a proposal.
And I certainly can.
I know a lot of people can't get permission from their library systems to go to a conference unless they're presenting.
So, if that's the case for you, absolutely go ahead and present it as a program, and just let the program committee know that you need to do it in an open area.
However, if you're not on the program or your program doesn't get selected, you can just do a Guerilla Storytime in the hallway.
You're absolutely welcome to do that.
And we have all of the stuff that you need to do a Guerilla Storytime on the website.
You can go to -- a PDF you can download of challenges.
I recommend that you have a mix of some theory-based questions.
So act out how you would deal with parents talking, and act out how you incorporate print motivation into story time, and also some actual skills, because sometimes it gets really theory-based and, as you know, just like children, adults sometimes need to stand up and shake their stories out or teach each other -- one of the great things about Guerilla Storytime you learn new songs and you go ahead and use them forever.
I'm still using the fruit salad song that I heard at the very first Guerilla Storytime, and it's genius.
You get new stuff in your kit.
That's one of the great things.
We're working on an actual downloadable PDF kit that should be ready any time now.
For the moment, you have the challenges, and all of the stuff about how to do it, and if you have any questions and you want to throw a Guerilla Storytime, we would love for you to do that.
You can do it at any state conference.
You can do it at -- if your state library organization has get-togethers or trainings, if your library system has get-togethers or trainings, you don't need a huge crowd of people to do a great Guerilla Storytime.
You can do it many, many, times, at different size events, and I've done it many times with some of the same people and new stuff comes up every time.
So, it's a really valuable way for professionals to get together and share their skills and get support.
If you have any questions and you want to do one, please let us know. 
>> So, somebody needs to unmute it sounds like perhaps. 
>> This is your slide.
That's all right.
>> I can talk about it.
>> Okay, good.
>> What we're moving into right now is we're looking to really have some state representatives, some chapter or district representatives.
Someone local who wants to kinds of move the storytime underground ethos forward in their local community.
Whether or not in your city, or in your area or in your state, someone who wants to get together, local librarians and have them do get-togethers, whether Guerilla Storytime or -- or some way of having people get together so that they have a localized support network.
It's amazing that the Facebook community allows people who can't make it to conferences a way to get to know each other and get support and get professional learning network, but I think there is something that is really, really valuable about knowing that there are people that you can call up and go out and really talk the knitty gritty of youth services librarian ship.
We are looking for people who want to take the lead on that and be representatives of "Storytime Underground" on the ground level.
And if I missed something, someone else can add something in. 
>> Sounds good.
So, the -- we had a cute animation on this slide.
Jimmy Fallon dancing with Elmo.
The link is at the bottom.
I guess the link isn't working.
Where can you find "Storytime Underground"?
Our blog, storytimeunderground.org.
Facebook page, groups/storytimeunderground.
You do have to be approved.
Like I said before, we screen to be sure that anyone who joins, early literacy or youth services related.
If you add yourself to the group, we will clear you through.
It only takes a minute.
You can follow us on Twitter @StorytimeU.
We want to make sure that you are involved, that you feel you have the resources available to you.
So, these are other social media platforms may be growing soon.
We are exploring Pinterest.
These are primarily where you are going to find us. 
And then one more slide. 
Okay.
So, this is the part of the webinar where we ask if you have any questions for us.
We have about a half hour actually.
We're doing good on time.
So, you can, if you think of a question afterwards that you forgot, feel free to email us.
Email us storytimeunderground@gmail.com.
You can reach out to any of the joint chiefs, cory, Kendra and I, and we have the new chiefs -- Julie Crabb, hi.
Brytani Fraser, Mary Kuehner, and Holly Storck-Post.
They are fabulous.
We would like to take this opportunity to see if you have questions for us.
We will see what we have for time, so we may do a mini Guerilla Storytime.
If you have any questions, you can put them in the chat.
>> Jennifer: Excellent.
I did see there definitely are folks interested in learning more about how either to be an rep or how to find folks in their areas for those spots where you didn't have markers on the map.
It sounds like you might be able to fill in some of those with participants today.
It sounds like a great place to start would be to email you all and I saw Cory, somebody mentioned that you are working on -- you're working on putting out a call for local reps sometime soon.
Do you want to talk more about how the rep process works?
>> I can.
I'm not sure that we are 100% know how it works.
This is a new idea brought to us by one of our new joint chiefs.
We love it so we're moving forward with it.
I think if you're interested in being an rep, you can send us an email, storytimeunderground@gmail.com.
Join the Facebook page, please.
If you are not already a member.
And if you, you know, keep an eye out and we will put out some on the blog and on Twitter and the Facebook page once we start kind of, you know, once we have a call out ready to go.
But if you know for sure that you want to be a local rep in your area, please just send us an email and say this is where I am.
We will work with you to see what that might look like for you.
You know, what you're interested in doing and how we can facilitate you getting ahold of people.
However that ends up looking.
Because, you know, in every area, it's going to be a different situation.
I know in some places, like Chicago, they have great -- 
they have a really strong community.
And some places that are less populated than Chicago, you know, it might look like something different.
So, any help that we can give you to try to work with what your community needs.
>> Yeah, I was going to ask how -- I could see that it really -- being a different think depending on how many folks there are connecting already.
Perhaps either within the library system or within a region.
Can you give a couple of examples of where you've seen the community really develop through "Storytime Underground" in a local region?
>> Well, this is brand, brand new.
>> Okay.
>> We haven't started doing it yet.
>> Okay.
That's right.
I'm glad that it is getting off the ground.
There was a question -- I'm going to throw this out there for everyone to chime in.
We know many of our attendees are from rural or small libraries, and oftentimes folks are doing story times that are not certified or degreed librarians, and we always like to take that opportunity to recognize you folks and thank you for your great work.
And know that you are very much welcome in the "Storytime Underground" community.
I have seen folks posting in the Facebook group that definitely are not degreed librarians, so I wonder if any of you want to talk a little about how you have seen those folks welcomed into the community. 
>> So, basically I wanted to just add on that, too, that really the "Storytime Underground," I almost think is like most beneficial for those of you who are not degreed librarians and who are in rural areas, because I used to be a librarian all by myself in a tiny little library and it gets really lonely and you don't really see lots of ideas because, you know, you're not with a bunch of other librarians all of the time.
I definitely want to encourage those of you in that situation, and if you know people in that situation, to tell them to log on.
Most of you probably have internet access.
Some of you I know still don't.
It is pretty accessible.
We will work with you any way we can to make it more valuable for you.
If you are having any kind of issues, let us know.
>> Jennifer: Excellent.
I see someone from an academic library community.
It is great to know that story times are happening in conjunction with your work.
Feel free to continue to post questions.
I definitely am excited to have you all do a mini Guerilla Storytime here.
We are always curious to see how virtually things that do obviously really well face-to-face can happen online.
So I know that it might be tricky, but like you said, a lot of times it is sort of happening that way within your community and on the Facebook group.
Let's see.
A question of are there any opportunities for library students?
Are there ways that you have seen library students sort of leverage and learn with the community?
>> Julie Crabb is actually a library student.
Hi, Julie, we love you.
She is still in library school.
She saw a call out for new joint chiefs and she applied and we loved her application.
She has gotten involved.
And that allows her to be at the forefront of a big movement in youth services librarianshiplibrarianship.
It will look good on her resume, I'm sure that is not why she is doing it but she loves "Storytime Underground."
It is a great way for her to get involved and meet a lot of people.
We do see a lot of students on the Facebook page and I think getting involved with Storytime University would be a great way to sort of use that time, especially if you are doing something like an internship with your school.
It would be great to keep track of the extra school stuff that you do to make yourself a better librarian so that when you're going into your first job interviews, I have been involved with this great thing and here is all of the extra stuff that I do.
>> Yeah, I would say, I know from my own experience, I think there was one class that really related to story times in my experience, so, yeah, there is a lot of gaps for folks that are in library school.
So this definitely can fill those gaps. 
There was a great question about in terms of somebody has a budget that they're pulling together, and wondered what sorts of resources should they ask for in their budget tools, flannel boards, because the program is growing and it has never really received the attention that it has been getting.
Do you have suggestions for how to build out that list for their budget? 
>> That could be a really good -- I don't know if we have had that question posed before.
But that could be a really great ask a Ninja -- could send out to other Ninjas and compile what they feel would be useful for a budget list.
I'm trying to pick my brain.
I don't think we have had that post.
But that's a great question. 
>> Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
That would be a perfect ask a Ninja question or if you want a faster response, you could ask it on the Facebook page as well.
>> Excellent. 
>> I did see a question about flannel board.
Someone was looking for flannel board -- I don't know if you are familiar with Flannel Friday, but it is an awesome movement.
It's hosted through some blogs.
If you go to Pinterest and search for Flannel Friday, boards and boards and boards dedicated to flannels and they are so cute and diverse.
Literally any subject that you can think of, you can go on there, and it should link you to either how they created the flannel themselves or where they found the template for it.
Social media is the best.
Lots of opportunities.
>> Jennifer: Excellent.
Another question that might be -- the answer might be in the making as you all figure this out.
But somebody asked what reps do if you were to become one.
It sounds like it could be a number of different things.
Can you foreshadow what reps might look like?
I know a lot of you are doing some of that rep work already, but what that may look like?
>> Brittany, one of the joint chiefs, if you -- she probably will be the one responding to you because she is spearheading this.
So far the ideas that all of us have talked about are things like a local chapter might head up doing Guerilla Storytimes at local conferences.
That might be something that you would be kind of in charge of.
Making sure that people in your state know about "Storytime Underground" and know what the benefits are.
Maybe you decide you want to have meetings, regular meet-up meetings, not like a conference or whatever, if anybody comes, you do a Guerilla Storytime.
I am trying to take -- bring storytime underground to Washington, big time.
And I'm having at the end of this week what we're calling a story time sharing extravaganza.
Anybody who is interested -- 
we're hosting it at a pierce county library system, Guerilla Storytime, share flannel ideas, it is going to be a great sharing opportunity.
We are planning on doing this maybe every three months.
We will invite people from the library community to do a presentation for 30 minutes on something that they're proud of.
I might talk about parachutes in storytime.
That is one kind of small vision of what the state representatives could be doing, but really you can come at us with ideas.
>> Jennifer: Excellent.
I see some other kinds of questions that I think you would all suggest for Ninjas or posting.
Why don't we go ahead and have you all -- do a little mini Guerilla Storytime, and folks keep posting questions and I am sensing that a lot of these questions will be great for them to use either for ask a Ninja or on the Facebook page.
We will see this as a precursor to some sharing through those channels as well.
Let's turn it back over to you all and see some magic. 
>> Sure.
If we were going to do Guerilla Storytime, and I think this is confusing and it may be confusing even after we have kind of done a quick overview of Guerilla Storytime.
Guerilla Storytimes are not storytimes.
We don't do a full storytime for kids, but it is really a training opportunity for adults.
We would have -- I have a cup -- a cool mug and it says Guerilla Storytime on it.
And I have challenges insides of it.
And so I would have somebody pick out a challenge and read it out and however many people at Guerilla Storytime had an answer, they would answer it.
For instance, one challenge, I like to start all of the Guerilla Storytime, sharing your favorite welcome song.
I would read that off.
And then whoever had a great welcome song would sing, get up on the mic and sing one.
So -- 
>> If you want to share your favorite welcome song in the chat.
We will post some questions to you guys and see what you guys all have experience in and we would love to hear from you. 
In may be some quiet periods.
Maybe if we go through and read the responses out loud.
>> Rene says arms up.
Laurel says how to do by woody Guthrie.
I love Woody.
I know the words to -- 
* open and shut them, open and shut them, give a little clap, clap, clap, open them, shut them, put them in your lap, lap, lap.
Open up your little mouth but do not let them in.
And someone else on the chat says -- you can see a video of Jay Berry doing it.
Guerilla Storytime, get up at the mic, breads and butter, marmalade and jam, let's say hello as quiet as we can.
Hello, fast and slow.
And those are all great ways for people to get new welcome songs. 
>> And I love what you guys are posting.
So many -- some of these I haven't heard of actually so I will have to look them up.
>> I know.
>> And that's the good thing about Guerilla Storytime, no matter how long you have been doing this, you still learn something new.
>> Kendra, Soraya, do you have another challenge question?
>> Yeah, let's see.
Let's pick a fun one.
>> They're all fun, Soraya, come on.
>> They are all fun.
Let's see. 
Let's do -- what's your favorite use of props in story time?
What is your favorite prop to use?
And so when you are in person in a Guerilla Storytime, what's really nice is that people -- 
we bring props for people to use so that they can actually demonstrate and you can see it live.
Because it is good to know what songs or what activities you may be using but seeing it live and how different people interpret songs.
There is definitely different ways to do each one.
An example of one of the story times.
I believe this was mid-winter, not positive, but we were doing songs together.
What are some of the favorite props to use?
And if you have any activities with the props, we can use that, too.
Ukulele, awesome.
Not proficient in that but would love to be one day.
>> We love story cubes.
Amy made us one one year for Christmas and they are the best, most fun thing in the world.
>> That is true. 
>> Scarves, of course, bubble machines.
>> Story cube, it is like a cube made out of cardboard that you can   roll, like a dice, and each side there is a different prop or sometimes a different song on each side.
Rather than having a set plan, you can roll the dice, basically, and see what song or what prop you are going to play.
>> And the bonus is that it is really -- I always talk about letter recognition.
Because the symbol on the box might be a smiley face and that's just helping kids understand that words are symbols and that the letters stand for something.
So, it is that association with text and symbols. 
It is kind of a bonus.
Puppets, puppets are great. 
>> I am personally a big puppet user.
>> Yes, I am, too.
That's great.
Oh, wow.
You guys have so many great ideas.
Parachutes -- I'm addicted to using the parachute.
If I'm in a Guerilla Storytime, we do always have a parachute session.
It is just required.
>> Adults really love parachutes.
Parachute is a great way to get non-use services librarians to get involved in Guerilla Storytime.
If you bust out the parachute, academic librarians, government librarians, whoever is going by -- it is a great way to spread the love.
>> I just asked this because somebody said toy microphone and I'm curious as to how you would use a toy microphone as a prop.
Who was that?
Oh, it's going away.
>> Julie.
>> Please share.
This is the other great thing about Guerilla Storytime, somebody will say something like that.
Kind of like because they use it all of the time and it is no big deal and everyone in the room says wait -- 
>> She says you can sing into it and let kids talk into it.
Which I think would be a fun way to have kids who maybe are a little shy to get involved.
>> Cute.
>> Go ahead, Kendra.Kendra.
>> Somebody said have to look into adding a parachute.
On my blog, I have kind of a living post about parachute play and I will post the link here in a second.
But it has been added to over like a couple of years as things come up, so you certainly are welcome to look at that for ideas and for instructions for using a parachute.
Keep going.
>> I was going to say, we would also ask, you know, when -- we would also ask questions like there is a parent at the back who won't stop texting and pay attention and their child is, you know, interrupting story time and they're not willing to deal with it.
So, act out how you would deal with it. 
And so, then, people -- what you see with that, people have very different ideas.
I have heard librarians say I don't care if they're texting or not.
And I have had librarians say that they say at the very beginning, you know, this is user participation and everybody participates and that that helps.
And, you know, I've had people who just say that they stop and stare until the person puts their phone down.
So, you hear all kinds of different professionals talk about how -- when I say professionals -- I mean people who do story times day in and day out have found different methods that work for them to get parents involved in story time.
>> At annual this year, we had some great Guerilla Storytimes going on.
A librarian from the UK and he posed a question that we had not asked before which was really fun.
It is not necessarily building on story time skills, but it is also great to share experiences with one another and to see like things that go on that are kind of crazy or out there, are not just unique to us.
It's universal.
You get weird stuff anywhere you're at.
And his question was something like what's the craziest thing that has ever happened at story time for you?
We got anywhere from a little girl squatting and just taking a pee in the middle of story time, to -- a crazy one -- oh, someone had outside of the story room, someone had -- I think had a heart attack or something outside and they needed to call the paramedics and they were resuscitating them and they were -- the story time -- the librarian was trying to keep the kids contained in the story time and not let them get distracted.
All sorts of crazy stuff.
But it was a great question to kind of see like what maybe unique experience you do have, and we kind of piggy-backed on that on what have been some of the best experiences in story time or what is your favorite part of story time.
I will pose that one to you guys.
What is a unique experience that was so cute or so heart-warming?
Let's see.
Do we have any -- I will share -- I will share one of mine.
I do toddler now.
I was doing family story time, which is all ages, but I was doing -- I'm doing toddler and I have some really little ones and I think one of my favorite parts of doing this age group is when they come every week and you do the same activities and same songs every week and then you just see it in their eyes one day when it clicks and they understand what you're doing and your little two-year-old is now doing the motions with you and it's just so -- it's so heart-warming to see.
I love our job.
It is so fulfilling. 
Let's see.
>> Oh, yes.
I love when I hear that the kid won't -- when a kid is too shy to participate in story time but I hear from mom that she is like singing her songs to her baby sister at home.
So you know it is getting there.
I had a mom bust in after story time and say we missed story time, but I need you to tell me what the words are to five fat sausages because she have been singing half of it over and over again for five days.
>> Awesome.
>> I just want to jump in.
I know there are a lots of great ideas coming through chat and just as many, many, many more coming through your Facebook and then on your community, and I know oftentimes people are overwhelmed and not sure either how can they ask the same questions again or -- and I just want to give a plug for I know that you all have a search box on your site.
So encourage people to use search, and I know that search on Facebook in groups works really well.
So, once you get to the group page, there is a search option.
So you can always go and find great ideas that have been shared earlier.
I know also that you're encouraged to post questions even if they have been posted many times because the community is constantly growing and changing.
I didn't know if you all have other things to add about how folks find things or share repeat questions. 
>> Go ahead, Kendra.
>> I posted a link to the archives.
It is not completely up to date, but ask a Ninja archives, you can look there if you want just a quick answer because it maybe has been asked and answered before.
Yeah, absolutely you can still ask a question even if it has been asked before because we have so many new members, you might get a different answer.
>> I want to say if you love us and you are so excited that you want to do a Guerilla Storytime in your town or state conference but you feel you are not 100% ready because you have never seen one, we're happy to work with you, but we are also happy if you contact us to send us a kit that you can then take to your -- someone at your state library or someone at the state association and maybe work with them because there are states that have never had a Guerilla Storytime, which means that there are people in those states who, you know, want or are desperate for all of this, hungry for all of this knowledge and community and networking, and, you know, you can be the person to help facilitate that happening even if you don't feel comfortable facilitating your own Guerilla Storytime by yourself.
>> Absolutely.
>> Anybody have any other questions really quick?
>> I haven't seen any other specific questions come through.
I hope I haven't missed in.
If we have missed them, we will definitely add responses or direct you to the right place on the archives.
Yes, the chat will be made available.
It's actually made available as an Excel document and you can search that as well if you are trying to remember things that came up.
We will add other links that came through chat to the archive page.
I want to give a plug, team created a learner guide for today's session.
We have been trying to create learner guides for all of our webinars as a way for you to extend the learning from the conversation today, and there is some great directed steps for how to get started on "Storytime Underground."
It is a great way for you to bring others into your learning.
So maybe there are others in your library or in your system that you want to learn together with, feel free to encourage them to come to the archives and maybe you can work through the guide together.
And I just want to thank all of our presenters and for all of your continued work and for Julie, I know that you all spend a lot of time on this, and it is certainly not -- it's very much appreciated in the entire, as you said, there are people around the world that are taking advantage of the great work you're pulling together.
Do you have any final comments or suggestions for folks before we wrap up?
>> Just please feel free to email us with questions, even just to say hello.
Really our virtual door is completely open.
Please don't forget that.
>> Thank you all.
>> Yes, come see us.
We would love to get everyone involved.
We would love to meet you all and have new friends.
Yay. 
>> Jennifer: Okay.
Fantastic.
Thanks to Anne for her captions today.
Everyone have an excellent day.
And I will be following up as soon as the archive is available and send a certificate to all of you here today before the end of next week.