At a time when many make self-satisfied gestures at the notion of \u201calternative facts\u201d that it looks like we\u2019ll be living with for the next four years, I\u2019d like to point out that we\u2019ve come to live with a few alternative facts of our own.<\/p>\n
A branch library I served at during the early 1990s attracted the patronage of a young man named \u201cRubin.\u201d He was about fourteen then\u00ad\u00ad\u2013the peak age identified by teachers, librarians, developmental psychologists, and administrators for \u201cteen behavior problems.\u201d From that point of view, Rubin might well have been labeled, incessantly hawked over, and routinely expelled from the library. This is an actual fact that happens every day.<\/p>\n
The point I want to emphasize, though, is that there is no such thing as \u201cteen behaviors.\u201d This is an \u201calternative fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTeen behaviors\u201d is just a clich\u00e9, a synonym, for staff who don\u2019t understand, or know how to build relationships with others who don\u2019t match prescribed and over-determined expectations.<\/p>\n
Ruben was stretching and exploring his social environment when visiting the library. Who would accept him? Who would toss him aside? This is an actual fact of social life.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how this story developed. I asked him his name. I asked him who his favorite teacher was and acted like I knew her (\u201cOh, yeah. Ms. Patton, at Belmont, sure, I know her . . .\u201d). When he asked me, I told him my girlfriend\u2019s name. I gave him his own library nickname, \u201cScreech,\u201d (after the nerdy character in Saved by the Bell\u2013<\/em>the 1980s\/90s TV sitcom\u2014<\/em>though he was certainly not a nerd\u2013whatever that is!). I introduced him to e-mail and early online chat (remember this was early-90s!). Then I made fun of the people he thought<\/em> he was communicating with when he was online chatting and flirting. He hated me for that! J<\/p>\n During this time, Ruben began to experiment with profanity. Not an uncommon fact.<\/p>\n Suddenly, everything was F\u2026 this and S\u2026 that.<\/p>\n Staff descended on him.<\/p>\n Frankly, I think that some staff came down on Ruben harder<\/em> because he and I had<\/em> developed a relationship\u2013this was a cynical opportunity to prove <\/em>that my approaches were na\u00efve. This was not only an alternative fact. It was also counterfactual.<\/p>\n When I was not around, Ruben was expediently ejected from the library upon the inevitable next profanity infraction.<\/p>\n Adults use profanity all the time in the library. No ejection there. Fact.<\/p>\n Even before I\u2019d encountered educator Ruby Payne, who has produced spectacular contributions to the work professionals do with clients from intergenerational poverty, I knew Ruben was reaching to broaden his horizons. His cursing was indeed selective <\/em>and strategic<\/em> (not compulsive) . . . he did it to express his growing power, familiarity, and comfort within our little library community.<\/p>\n One day I told him that I needed him to \u201chelp me do some stuff\u201d and asked for his assistance. I invented a few tasks for him to do while I was on the reference desk . . . and told him that he needed to be within ear-shot of me while I was serving on the desk.<\/p>\n I wanted him to observe<\/em> my interactions with library users.<\/p>\n After about an hour I took him aside. I asked him to evaluate what he observed of my interactions with the public. What did he think of my attitude in serving the people who came up to the desk? Why was I kind of dressed-up (buttoned-down collar on a pressed shirt, ironed slacks, and polished street shoes)? What did he observe of my phone work? What kind of language did I use and why?<\/p>\n Eventually, we got around to how those things were important aspects of serving the community. My language, dress, and manner reflected the respect I both gave and how I was received by library users.<\/p>\n Our interaction went something like this:<\/p>\n Anthony: Do I talk the same way with you that I do with other library users?<\/p>\n Rubin: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n A: Do you think I talk \u201call polite like that\u201d<\/em> with my friends?<\/p>\n R: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n A: With my girlfriend?<\/p>\n R: \u201cNO!\u201d<\/p>\n A: \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n R: \u201cBecause you know them.\u201d<\/p>\n A: \u201cRight. I talk differently<\/em> when I am representing the library.\u201d<\/p>\n A: \u201cWhen you (Rubin) use swear words in your own life you might be just relating casually with your friends or you might be disrespecting the people around you. But you make a choice, don\u2019t you? When you cuss while you are volunteering for the library, though, you tell the public that the library doesn\u2019t respect them. And when you do it around these children you are squandering the role model you represent to them.\u201d<\/p>\n A: \u201cIs this what you want?\u201d<\/p>\n I will not say that Ruben stopped cussing overnight. He didn\u2019t. And that\u2019s a fact. But over the next few weeks, it dropped off to nearly nothing. And that\u2019s a fact, too.<\/p>\n After our discussion, and building on our relationship<\/em>, he modulated his language himself because he could see the implications and preferred to avoid them in the library.<\/p>\n Is this being a social worker? A psychologist?<\/p>\n No. It\u2019s the kind of explicit and discrete role modeling you hear and read about all the time but rarely see in action. It\u2019s modeling what community-based public service is about. It\u2019s modeling what it means to respect and serve a real and actual community\u2013a factual place and time. It\u2019s modeling these things not simply for one young man who deserved just a little more attention but it\u2019s modeling that behavior perhaps even more significantly for library staff that might otherwise feel entitled to impose their own alternative facts, privileging their alternative facts selectively on the head of young people.<\/p>\n While I don\u2019t have any photos or evidence, you\u2019ll have to just take my word for how this story ended. Ruben became a steadfast volunteer for the branch. He began demonstrating how people could use the computer scanner (new then). He started assisting the computer tutor with word processing instruction for Spanish speakers. He eventually served one-term as my appointed YA volunteer program assistant.<\/p>\n Rubin became, in Ruby Payne\u2019s terms, a \u201chomegrown leader.\u201d<\/p>\n The other option would have been to institute alternative facts and throw him out every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a time when many make self-satisfied gestures at the notion of \u201calternative facts\u201d that it looks like we\u2019ll be living with for the next four years, I\u2019d like to point out that we\u2019ve come to live with a few alternative facts of our own. A branch library I served at during the early 1990s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160990,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160989\/revisions\/160990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.youthfacts.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}