The Library Stage

🚲 Episode 10: The Bike Is the Library with Betsy Snow

What if the students who never walk into your library aren't avoiding you, they just never had it show up where they already are?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Bay Area library media specialist Betsy Snow. Betsy shares how a pandemic habit of biking books to students turned into a grant-funded cargo trike that unfurls into a full mobile library, and how that bike now shows up at homecoming games, the Dream Club dinner, the Fourth of July parade, and quiet corners of a campus surrounded by redwoods.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

💡 Steal This Idea: Reposition the Collection
You don't need a book bike. Trick out a rolling cart and take it into the halls. Keep the books free so there's no barrier to walking away with one. Partner with your public library or a local bookstore to fill it!

Follow Page's journey here.

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call:

• 📖 Betsy's book recommendations — three summer reads plus a title on educators facing the culture wars, which Betsy herself contributed to

Follow Betsy: 📱 TikTok: @nonfungibleteacher IG: @shs.mediacenter

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

Want to take the stage? Pitch your talk at [email protected].

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #BookBike

Episode 9: The Library Is Theirs with Rachael Welsh

What if the fastest way to get students into the library wasn't a new book order, but handing them a shelf?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes middle school librarian Rachael Welsh, whose student-centered initiatives turn the library from a room students visit into a space they own. Rachael shares how Adopt-a-Shelf grew out of a weeding project and now gives every student, not just her helpers, a two-week display to curate, design, and restock. She also walks through her emergency supply and SEL stations, her student-run library ambassador podcast, and the World Read Aloud Day videos that connect her fifth and sixth graders with elementary readers across the district.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

📋 Rachael's Resources:

• 📚 Adopt-a-Shelf Application
• 🎤 Library Ambassador Application
• 📚 Reading Culture presentation

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call: a full slate of summer camp mysteries for middle grade and YA:

• 📖 Rachael's book recommendations

Follow Rachael: 📱 Instagram: @rachaelreads | TikTok: @rachaelreads_ ✉️ [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

Want to take the stage? Pitch your talk at [email protected].

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #MiddleSchoolLibrary #StudentVoice #LibraryDisplays #SEL #ReadingCulture #Libraries #DiscoveryTalk

🥎 When you list the departments you want to collaborate with, where do coaches fall? For most of us, dead last. Mindy Garcia found out that's exactly where the opportunity is.

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Mindy Garcia, librarian and media specialist at Tomball Memorial High School. Mindy shares the athlete book club she's now run four times across two campuses: baseball, volleyball, and two years of softball.

Her opening move cost a photocopy. She copied a one-page article about the idea, wrote a note offering to collaborate, and dropped it in every coach's box. One coach answered. That was enough.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

📌 Idea credit to librarian Jessica Fitzpatrick, who presented it at Setting the Trend and wrote it up for a library publication. Student Book Clubs for Athletes, Leaders, and Reluctant Readers

Books used in the club: The Energy Bus and The Coffee Bean, both by Jon Gordon

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Mindy's book recommendations

Follow Mindy: 📱 TikTok: @mindylately

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #HighSchoolLibrary #BookClub #StudentAthletes #TeacherCollaboration #SecondaryLibrary #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

What if you could highlight two different reading lists in multiple languages?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Carolyn Slavin, a bilingual elementary librarian in Leander ISD. Carolyn serves on the Tejas Star Reading List Committee. She takes the stage to break down the reading challenge she runs at her dual language campus, where she pairs the 20 Tejas Star titles with the 20 Texas Bluebonnet titles into a single forty-book challenge, printed back to back on one tracking sheet, so every student is choosing from the same menu.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

📖 Carolyn's book recommendations — Popo y Xolo, a Pura Belpré–honored picture book from the Tejas Star list, plus The Invisible Parade from the Bluebonnet list

Resources:

📚 Tejas Star Reading List and Texas Bluebonnet Award

🆓 tracking sheets and per-title activities for Tejas & Bluebonnet

Follow Carolyn: 📱 Instagram: @reedelemlib (English) @bibliotecaread (Spanish) Personal: @cslavin87

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #TejasStar #Bluebonnet #ElementaryLibrary #DualLanguage #BilingualBooks #EmergentBilingual #ReadingChallenge #TLA #TxASL

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Episode 6: Comparison Is Expensive with Rebeca Fox

What if the reason your library program feels like it's falling short is that you're building someone else's?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Rebeca Fox, known as The Fox Reads on social media, a Texas high school librarian with nearly a decade in libraries and twelve years in the classroom before that, spanning elementary, middle, and high school. Fox takes the stage with the best library advice she ever received, from a fellow librarian who runs an honest-to-goodness garden inside his school: find what you're passionate about, what you're actually good at, and build your program out of that. Because the enthusiasm is the part that's contagious--not the program itself.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

Plus, Fox's Curtain Call:

• 🛠️ Edtech Tools: Her library resources: Teacher Pay Teacher store, her link in bio, her store on Librarians Teach
• 💡 Steal-this-idea: Get yourself on the campus leadership team. You'll learn more about what's actually happening on your campus than you ever will from inside the library and you'll be in the room when decisions about your program get made.

Follow Fox: 📬[email protected] @thefoxreads on IG, TikTok , Youtube and Bluesky

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #LibraryAdvocacy #NewLibrarian #SchoolLibrary #TeacherLibrarian #LibrarianLife

Episode 5: Escape Rooms Are Curriculum with Maegen Cockrell

What if the reason your big library event flopped had nothing to do with the event and everything to do with the timing of the ask?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Maegen Cockrell, high school librarian at Killeen High School and district lead librarian for high schools in Killeen ISD, now in her fourteenth year in education and sixth as a librarian. Maegen shares the two-year arc that changed how she builds library programming: a fully decorated Christmas escape room that drew exactly one group, followed by a benchmark-review escape room built at a teacher's request that pulled in nearly every student in the room. Her takeaway is one every librarian can use tomorrow: when the escape room is the review day, buy-in stops being something you beg for.

⚡️ Note: a storm knocked out power mid-recording, so this episode runs shorter than our usual 18 minutes. The format's not changing — the weather just had opinions.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

🎁 Steal these: Maegen is sharing two complete escape rooms, instructions included.

• 🔓 High school benchmark review escape room — rhyme scheme, figurative language, satire, irony, Morse code, and a custom library map
• 🔓 Third grade scaffolded version — author's purpose, figurative language, story elements, and an alphabet cipher

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Maegen's book recommendations — If We Never End by Laura Taylor Namey, Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson, and Killing Sadie by Rachel Peterson (out August 4)

Follow Maegen: 📱 TikTok: @megmercedes | Instagram: @ms.c_histteach

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #EscapeRoom #BreakoutEDU #LibraryProgramming #SecondaryLibrary #ElementaryLibrary #TeacherCollaboration #DiscoveryTalk

Episode 4: Advocacy Through Grant Writing with Christine Szeluga

What if the funding for your dream library program is already out there, and no one has applied for it?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes Christine Szeluga, Librarian/Library Media Specialist at Cranford High School in Cranford, New Jersey, where she leads innovative programming that integrates research, media literacy, and technology.

She shares how school librarians can turn grant writing into a form of advocacy, where to look for the money that's already sitting on the table, and why applying to present at a conference belongs in the same conversation. Christine's work has been recognized with ALA's "I Love My Librarian" Award (2026), the AASL 'Miss Honey' Social Justice Award (2025), the NJASC High School Advisor of the Year Award (2025), and the NCHE Paul Gagnon Prize (2014).

Pillar: 🧡 Edtech

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Christine's ⁠book recommendation⁠ — All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, the title behind her first-ever book challenge
• 🛠️ Her favorite tool: ⁠Ancestry Classroom K–12⁠
• 💡 Steal This Idea: Local History: pick one historical thing in your community and turn students loose on it. Scale it as big or small as you want.
• 💡 Steal This Idea #2: An intergenerational book club

Resources: Grants & Awards Worth Your Application

National library organizations: ⁠AASL Grants & Awards⁠ (conference proposals open Nov 2026) | ⁠ALA Grants & Awards⁠ | ⁠Thinking Money for Kids⁠ | ⁠Pokémon Clubs at Your Library⁠ | ⁠Will Eisner Graphic Novel Grants for Libraries⁠ | Friends of the Library (501c3s — check yours) | ⁠Donors Choose⁠

State & local (check your own state's equivalents): NJLA Mini-Grants | NJASL | NJEA PEP/FAST Grants

Subject-area organizations: ⁠NCTE REALM Award for Student Publication⁠ | ⁠NCHE⁠ — conference proposals + the Paul A. Gagnon Prize | ⁠NCSS Awards & Grants⁠ | ⁠National History Day⁠ — judge or enter students; very supportive of new schools

Student leadership: National Association of Student Councils | NJASC (check your local association)

Follow Christine: 📱 Instagram: @cranfordhighlibrary 💼 ⁠LinkedIn⁠ 📩 [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TakeTheStage #GrantWriting #LibraryAdvocacy #SchoolLibrary #Libraries #DiscoveryTalk

Episode 3: Language Is Identity with Miranda Quintero

What if serving your bilingual students had almost nothing to do with whether you speak their language?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes bilingual elementary school librarian Miranda Quintero to reframe one of the most common barriers librarians name: "I don't speak their language." Miranda shares how discovering her own heritage language reshaped her identity, and why language isn't just vocabulary and grammar, but family, memory, tradition, and belonging. She offers four things every librarian can start doing tomorrow, no fluency required: learn and honor student names, read bilingual books aloud (imperfectly!), choose authentic books by bilingual and Latinx authors, and invite families in as partners rather than visitors. Plus, why representation deserves all twelve months of the year, not just Sept 15–Oct 15.

Pillar: 🩷 Literacy

Plus, stick around for her Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Miranda's book recommendations: Offside by Christina Diaz Gonzalez & Please Pass the Tamales by Sylvia Lopez, illustrated by Maria Ortega (8/18)
• 💡 Steal This Idea: a "Languages We Love" display that goes beyond Spanish and English to honor every home language in your building

Resources: ⁠Tejas Star Reading List⁠ | ⁠Centering Latinx Joy: TLA presentation⁠

Follow Miranda: 📱 TikTok/Instagram/Bluesky/Facebook: @Bilingualbibliotecaria 📩 [email protected]

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian) 🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage

Episode 2: Lunch Is a Library Program with Nick Moore

What if one of the best library programs didn't require a budget, a guest speaker, or months of planning?

In this episode of The Library Stage, Amanda Hunt welcomes elementary school librarian Nick Moore to share how opening the library during lunch has transformed student engagement, built relationships, and created a space where every learner feels they belong. Nick discusses how this simple idea became one of the most impactful parts of his library program while also sharing insights into makerspaces, technology integration, and creating joyful learning experiences.

Pillar: 🩵 Discovery

Plus, stick around for his Curtain Call featuring:

• 📖 Nick's book recommendations +

• 🛠️ 2 of his favorite tools: WeWillWrite & Tinkercad

Follow Nick:
📱 Instagram/X: @learnteachmoore
🌐 powderspringsllc.weebly.com

Hosted by Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian)
🌐 thenextgenlibrarian.com

#TheLibraryStage #SchoolLibrarians #TaketheStage #ElementaryLibrary #Makerspace #EdTech #Libraries #DiscoveryTalk

Welcome to The Library Stage where school librarians take the stage. 18 minutes. One big idea. Every episode.

In this first episode, host Amanda Hunt, MLS (@TheNextGenLibrarian), a Texas school librarian with 20 years across all levels of education, pulls back the curtain on the show: why school librarians are the best-kept secret in education, what to expect from the three pillars (🩷 Literacy, 🧡 Edtech, 🩵 Discovery), and how the TED-style 18-minute format works, from the Opening Act to the Curtain Call.

Plus: the very first Curtain Call. Here are Amanda's rapid-fire recs to kick off the show, including:

🩷 A book she can't stop recommending: Copefield and Strong Like You by T.L. Simpson. Both Young Teen Lit books that feature boys in sports that deals with toxic masculinity and sharing emotions in a healthy way instead of in anger.

🧡 A tool that's earning its spot in her library: Adobe Podcast & Adobe Aqua (see links below) &

🩵 One steal-this-idea you can try tomorrow: got a device and a mouth? Give podcasting a try with your students--it's so easy they'll become experts in no time, even with little training!

Think your library story belongs on the stage? Pitch your talk: [email protected]

Connect: thenextgenlibrarian.com | @TheNextGenLibrarian
#TheLibraryStage #TakeTheStage

The Library Stage is an independent podcast, not affiliated with TED Conferences LLC.

Resources:

Adobe Podcast

Adobe Aqua

Leading From the Library podcast by Shannon McClintock Miller

School Librarians United podcast by Amy Hermon

Library on Lock podcast by Lauren Mobley

The School Librarian Learning Network by Steve Tetreault

The Library Exchange by Julie & Jan