If You Have Emotions and You Know It - Shout Hooray: Presenting Social Emotional Learning in Storytime

Wednesday, August 4^th 11:00am-12:00pm

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has always been an important part of education and human development. With the ongoing pandemic and shocking headlines (including a mass shooting in my hometown) now, more than ever, we are prompted to help caregivers and young children learn how to express and understand their emotions. 

With the overwhelming amount of books in this genre, this webinar will help attendees choose books that involve SEL learning and also use (just about) any books, music and other storytime material to decipher feelings.  

Attendees will learn how to:

• Choose age-appropriate materials for subject matter, with many examples.
• Create opportunities for conversations during storytimes and receive hints on how to deal with sticky emotional situations, from parents talking during stoytime to a child’s hard question or comment during storytime. 
• Build connections with children, so they feel heard and foster lasting relationships beyond storytimes.
• Connect caregivers to resources where they can get answers to questions from places other than books. Keeping in mind, we are not the experts in this field.
• Workshop with other members of the library field to help each other with SEL, not only for patrons, but also ourselves!

Melanie Borski-Howard ~ Biography

MELANIE BORSKI-HOWARD has been working in libraries for over 25 years. She has presented webinars on Musical, Drag Queen, and Embracing Race in Storytimes. She currently works at the Boulder Public Library in Colorado as a Youth Services Specialist.  She has been reading stories to children for over 17 years and currently presents four to five (virtual) Pre K storytimes per week. She has an on-demand storytime show, Read with Us, on the local TV Channel 8 in Boulder, Colorado. Melanie is a member of the Colorado Library Association,  CLEL (Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy) where she is currently serving on the CLEL BELL selection committee and the American Library Association (ALA). And last, but not least, she is the co-author of the book, Storytimes and Beyond: Having Fun with Early Literacy, published by Libraries Unlimited.