STEM, Snacks, and Summertime Fun at the Library BY KEVIN YANG
It’s a chance for all of us to come together and build relationships (and puppets!) on a summery Saturday afternoon at the library. Caylee Haus Reger, Manager of General Audience Engagement and lead coordinator for this year’s program, shares how the events fit into the greater mission of her team, “Our Lifelong Learning team at TPT seeks to provide meaningful and engaging learning experiences for people of all ages. We are grateful that the Summer STEM Events allow us to connect with multigenerational families. It’s wonderful getting to be in different communities across the metro to learn, build relationships, and create memories together.” This event would be impossible without our wonderful partners at the Metropolitan Library Service Agency (MELSA), a regional library system that services the eight library systems in the 7-county metro area. We’ve seen this program grow from four library partners during our first year of programming, to 18 library partners across all eight MELSA library systems for this year’s events.
For the past three summers, I’ve gotten the chance to help out with Summer STEM Events. It's a program where TPT invites families to stop by at a local library where they can try hands-on STEM activities and meet characters from the TPT-produced program, Hero Elementary . As a staff member who mostly works behind the scenes for our education team, I love helping out at these events because it’s an opportunity for me to engage with the kids, parents, and families who are a part of our community. Engagement can take a lot of different forms at our events. It can involve helping a kid build a Daniel Tiger hand puppet from a paper bag. It can involve helping someone brainstorm the right questions to ask their friends so that they can guess which mystery animal is on their head. It can involve giving Sara Snap a big high-five and letting others know it’s okay to give her a big high-five back. Engaging with our community, especially at events like these, is an opportunity for all of us to get to know each other better. It’s a chance for the community to better understand that our station does so much more than make TV shows. It’s a chance for me to better understand the real people behind the email addresses and Facebook likes.
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JULY 2024
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