Building Equity-Based Summers (BEBS) Podcast
Episode #6: Equity-Based Teen Services Requires Authenticity
In this BEBS podcast episode we talk with Isabelle, Briggs, the Arts and Culture Program Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Library. Our conversation about equitable teen services covers the importance of authentic relationships that dig below the surface, creating spaces that truly create a sense of belonging, and the importance of acknowledging teen lived experiences in building equitable teen practices.
From the episode:
Building Equity-Based Summers is funded in part through the Institute of Museum and Library Services..
In this BEBS podcast episode we talk with Isabelle, Briggs, the Arts and Culture Program Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Library. Our conversation about equitable teen services covers the importance of authentic relationships that dig below the surface, creating spaces that truly create a sense of belonging, and the importance of acknowledging teen lived experiences in building equitable teen practices.
From the episode:
Building Equity-Based Summers is funded in part through the Institute of Museum and Library Services..
Hi everybody, welcome to our latest podcast. I'm Linda Braun, one of the team working on the Building Equity-Based Summers BEBS initiative, and I'm here with my colleague, friend and equity consultant, LaKeisha Kimbrough LaKeisha take us away.
LaKesha Kimbrough:Hi everyone, so great to be part of this podcast Again LaKeisha Kimbrough, equity consultant for this project, and we've had the amazing opportunity to have glorious conversation with Isabel Briggs around what's it mean to support and work and walk alongside teenagers. Isabel, who are you?
Isabelle Briggs:My name is Isabel. I am the Arts and Culture Program Coordinator for LA County Library. Previously, I have worked with teens for, you know, seven years or something like that, and I was a teen services librarian when I started BEBS in 2020.
Linda Braun:We're really happy to have you here, Isabel. It would be great if you could tell us a little bit about your teamwork.
Isabelle Briggs:During 2020 and during 2021 and, like, I felt very strongly that I needed to use the you know, my platform as a teen librarian to have a lot of political opinions and to share those political opinions. They were not neutral, but they were like. I was like this is in the interest of the world that these people who I work for are going to have it. So I sorry, I don't know, maybe that's a little rambly, but like that, like it's not like, oh, I don't know. Like, and I do the like the librarians speak out about certain things or something. It's like well, no, because this is an issue that matters to these people who I'm serving, and so it's an issue that matters to me. I don't know.
LaKesha Kimbrough:Well, you were advocating, you were being an ally and you were being a accomplice, right? And when we think about what does that mean? It means really being a good ancestor. Now, even though I'm here, like I'm creating, helping to support the creation of something that's sustainable and nourishing and more.
Isabelle Briggs:Just right, yeah something I've talked about a lot is like teen services in my mind was like total sublimation of the ego, like I am nothing, I have no like. This is not. It's the most for me. It felt like such a rich experience of like I don't know anything, I don't know what is cool or what is important, or but anyone's lives are like like I am just here to like listen and learn and like be told that I am lame and like not funny and that I wear weird clothes and I'm like, yes, fine, take it, I'll take it, I'll take it like whatever. I just want you to feel like your voices, like that your opinion matters or whatever. So I don't know, it's just like the way that and that's uncomfortable.
Isabelle Briggs:It's uncomfortable to like be especially in a professional setting, like we are like as librarians, like we're profession, like this is our job and my job is to like sit at a desk and and and just be like the, the dumbest person in the room, be like I don't know. Tell me, I have no idea. Like what's your life about? I? I'm not gonna tell you anything about me. What do you think? Like that is a weird place to be in. It's it requires a both and or something of like I knew what your story is, the only thing that matters right now, and and who I am is relevant, kind of. I mean, it's not because you have to like know yourself and examine who you are and where you're coming from and what prejudices or narratives you have, but at the end of the day, it feels like there's sort of a like a flattening of yourself that you need to engage with, and that's to really be able to listen and and and to, and to, and to serve as well as you were just saying that.
Linda Braun:I think there's a something really key there, but that everything we talked about in Bebs, when you're building the practices, you, in order to achieve what you were talking about with teens, you had to have trust in relationships with them. Right and so in order, teens, some teens and I don't want to sound like be one of the negatizers, others of teens, but any anyone will say bad things to your face, right, like sometimes, like just people sometimes are mean right that when you work with teens if you have trust in relationship with them, you can have a conversation about some of those things, right.
Linda Braun:So it might not be that they tell you your clothes are weird, you might not have a conversation about that, but you might like, if you have trust in relationships, you don't take it personally and you go like, yeah, I bought this here and I thought it looks sort of cool or whatever. And you can also relate that conversations with teens, when you hear things being said that maybe you know, let's think about that, right, let's think about what you just said, who you said it to, how you said it. Right, you can't do that unless you've built that foundation and it has to be a foundation for all of the teens one works with and where they trust you. They can say things and they can trust you that if you're gonna say something you're gonna have a conversation about it's not just like, hey, don't ever say that again.
Isabelle Briggs:I feel like it's a curiosity thing. Yeah, go ahead.
LaKesha Kimbrough:Oh, it is a curiosity thing, and they also have to see us being vulnerable, though in order to build that trust right. So, they have to see us and hear us say oh, I messed that up Y'all, I'm sorry.
Linda Braun:I dropped the ball.
LaKesha Kimbrough:I really apologize. This is how I'm going to work to do better. When they tell us that something we said or did made them feel excluded or caused some other type of harmful feeling and we caused harm, we apologize for that. We don't make excuses. We don't give the fake apology that says I'm sorry if you felt that way. That's not an apology that puts the honest back on them and we're not demonstrating taking accountability. So those apologies that don't say if and or, but unless the and is and I'm going to work to do better, right, right.
LaKesha Kimbrough:So they have to see us be vulnerable in those ways and part of that vulnerability comes in that power sharing. It comes in admitting we don't have all the answers, we don't know all the things, we don't know the latest song, maybe we do know the latest song, but you know whatever it is. Can we do the latest dance with them without you know so? But whatever it is, allowing them to see we make mistakes and we try again, allowing them, and as Linda said, to see that we will lovingly and graciously hold them accountable. Let's have a conversation about that. Oh, when you said that, this is how that sounded to me, this is how that felt and I'm curious how it felt for others in our space right now. Let's explore that Without judging them, without shaming them, because we know judgment and shame don't work, not if we're working towards equity and liberation and just transformation. They don't work for those things.
Linda Braun:You're also making me realize something you said. Lakeisha is also about we need to be our authentic selves and teens need to have the ability to be their authentic selves when interacting with the library. It's thinking about more than the outward. I like this light bulb in my head and it's super interesting to me because I'm realizing. I think that if we said you're authentic selves with teens, that people would be like yeah, well, I like manga, so I wear my eye of blue hair. That's not authentic, right?
Isabelle Briggs:Yeah, it's not good for it. I totally agree, and I think surface stuff like that is like like it's got to be deeper authenticity than just like what's up, guys, I'm wearing a backwards baseball hat or something like that Like it has to be emotional authenticity and some of that. I think a big part of that is talking to teens like they're adults is like a huge thing. I mean, I think that's becoming more common practice is like talk to children and teens like they're adults and share with them like who you are and what your opinions about things are, and be like I was thinking this, am I wrong? What do you think about that? Or like being intellectual, being curious, having sharing your own thoughts and asking for their feedback, and treat them like people? Isabel, I don't know, Because that's what you're describing. That's exactly what you're describing. Do you mean like a person?
Isabelle Briggs:not like another alien thing.
LaKesha Kimbrough:Bridging You're describing like how do we bridge to get from other of them and I think a lot of what has been said is being your authentic self and showing up and modeling and all these things bridging so that we can really say actually we're all human. We're at different stages of being human and along with being at different stages comes different experiences, different developmental things. And it doesn't mean that you're lesser than me because you're a teenager. It means we're at different stages of being human.
Isabelle Briggs:And I think, being that like, having that sort of deeper authenticity and that vulnerability allows you to work with people who, again, like, might have very different experiences than you did, like it allows you to be to show up for more people, I think, as opposed to like yeah, like, I have a quirky haircut and that is meant to signal that I'm cool to the other kids with quirky haircuts, like, I don't know, that's the surface level sort of authenticity, but like, when you are more just yourself than like, then you can connect on those things that all of us have in common, all teens have had in common, and, and like you're not just, you can, I think, make yeah, just make connections with people who who are different from you, who might not have the same stuff to talk about, but and I just feel like, yeah, that when you sort of put on the trappings of like I'm a cool young person, like that actually sort of like makes you more niche or something than just being yourself and being like hey, I'm going to be emotionally vulnerable with young people because I think that they're humans and adults.
LaKesha Kimbrough:So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about that. Is that like, how freeing is it to just be to be myself and to co-create a space? Brave enough for me to be myself, because there aren't all of those spaces where we always feel like we can show up as fully ourselves as as we would like to? And it takes bravery. And and then shared space, it takes co-creation and co-maintenance, right, and so to do that with teens also helps them lean into the ability to create and maintain those spaces. And then they get to say, oh, wow, I can like be free in this space, I can mess up in this space, I can laugh in this space, I can cry in this space, I can learn and grow in this space, I can have moments of regression in this space and come back from that, right, all of those things.
LaKesha Kimbrough:I'm super curious, linda and Isabel. Isabel, how did you come to this awareness? I know you mentioned like during the pandemic. You were like wait, I really like 2020, 2021. I want to think about how I'm really engaging with the young people, the teens in my community.
Isabelle Briggs:Yeah, yeah, thank you. I think it was actually earlier than that. I started working in teen services in my hometown of Baltimore and I'm from Baltimore, it's my hometown but I was working in a library branch that was near where I went to high school. It was a very familiar neighborhood, but also Baltimore is a majority black city and I'm white and very early on in my time there I think I can do an answer like I have. I might be from the city and have gone to high school down the street, but I have a very different experience than a lot of the kids who I'm serving here, and there's nothing in the world I can do to make myself more like. I can't change who I am or my past or where I come from, so I can't make myself a different person, but all I can do is just kind of be who I am and I think that they'll respond to who I am, hopefully regardless of like. I can't try. I'm not trying. What am I trying to say? The more I try, harder to be cooler or to be someone I'm not, or that's just not going to be authentic, that's not going to connect with people, I don't know. So I think that that was maybe when I first started thinking about just like you have to just be yourself. Like just you can't make up for it. You just are who you are, you have the experiences you have and you, but like what are your strengths? And just bring your strengths to it. I'm spunny and silly and I don't mind being like the, making a fool of myself, because then all of the awkward teens around me are laughing at me and not at each other and like that's the skill I have, I can do that and I can do that for anybody, regardless of where you're from. So I think that like that. And then starting my work after grad school, like similar vibes of just like I'm now I'm in California, I don't have anything to connect with these California kids, like I'm not from the same place they are, but like I just gotta be myself and be curious about them and be curious about them and like let them tell me about themselves. So I don't know, I think that's maybe like how my sort of past has informed that approach, because I'm trying to put myself every day in like the headspace of a teen.
Isabelle Briggs:But I think what I thought about being in that headspace of being a teenager was the realization that, like the most, I think one of the most important things experiences you can have as a teen is meeting an adult who cares about you, who is not your mom or not your dad or your teacher or your family member or something like that, like having a friend who's an adult, like I can think of adults I knew when I was a teen who I thought were so freaking cool and I love them and I look up to them and like they were, and they were not my teachers or not my parents or and like those and those. The commonality in those adults was that they treated me like I was an adult too and it made me feel so much cooler and bigger and more confident and so like. I think that was something I was always trying to like. That was the effect I wanted to have is like thinking about who I was as a teen.
Isabelle Briggs:That was a critical thing. I want to give that back and I want to be that like random lady at the library who's like really nice and like talks to me a lot and I can just go sit at her desk and like shoot the shit I don't know if I can say that and just, you know, just chat, and I think I, I, I think I achieved that I do in my time, especially my last job or as a team member and like I felt, like I started to get that word, like there are these teens who would come around and sometimes they would talk to me. Sometimes they wouldn't, but they liked being in the space and being near me and like we could be side by side and be comfortable and like this is this, is it like this is the thing happening, that is so that can just really be a.
Isabelle Briggs:I found her now. I think it's you. Hold on to those adults from your childhood who saw you and that's what you want to give is just like. Maybe we're very different, like I said, maybe we're not from the same part of town, maybe we've had very different experiences, privileges in our life, all of the sort of stories, but like let's just like be in the space together and just be comfortable with each other and just like see each other for who we are and and and be authentic.
LaKesha Kimbrough:You said be seen and I think the whole time that you were sharing. All I kept thinking not all a big thing I kept thinking was Isabel is really describing the power of being seen, the power of validation, the power of acknowledgement and all of those things are so important and feeling like I belong in a space and belonging is critical in equity. It's not separate from equity, it is actually part of equity.
Linda Braun:Well, I'm thinking I heard Isabel being seen as well, like that was very powerful. And then LaKeisha, when you just said belonging, because it is foundational to equity. However, this is another thing where I think library staff don't understand what that really means. Right, like what is. And you said what you said about belonging with part of it is being seen.
Linda Braun:I don't know if a library staff person would say that's what belonging is, right, like I and I could be totally wrong and I apologize to all our listeners. I'm just wondering, like if we were to say what is belonging, what does that look like? How do you create belonging? I don't even know how to describe it because it is a little abstract. Right, to help someone feel like they belong. However, being seen, not just having the space and being welcoming, it's being seen in the space, in the community. That makes a difference, right, and I'm super curious that's why I'm just making that face is because, oh, if we're talking about team belonging in the library, what is that? I don't even know if I could break it down, because I know it's not space and being friendly, I'm just so interesting.
LaKesha Kimbrough:Linda. That was really. I think maybe I was audibly saying hmm when you said that, because I think that is possibly true in many spaces and it might look or feel different in different spaces. And I think that that is really true, especially when I'm going to come back to the intersectionality, especially if a team is a team of color. Is a team? Is a female identifying team of color? Is a female identifying queer, neurodivergent team of color is a team of color whose family is experiencing economic hardship.
LaKesha Kimbrough:So what it might mean to create and sustain a space that nourishes belonging means then, if that's the ultimate goal or a component of the ultimate goal, what are we doing in our spaces to ensure these various that various lived experiences can show up? Melissa Stanton, who does equity work in Minnesota, has a formula that she has developed that she uses to describe belonging. But this is the formula. Melissa Stanton says that belonging is made up of this formula connection plus trust, plus autonomy, plus attunement plus love. So if I feel like I can have meaningful connections, moments of connection with someone or in a space, if there is, are those connections plus I can trust the people in that space, I can trust the person who's holding that space. Plus, I feel like I have some sense of agency, of control, so not like if or am.
LaKesha Kimbrough:All these things have to come into play. So then, plus there are, there is some acceptance of my values and my beliefs and, in some areas, some alignment of those values and beliefs, even if I come to them differently than someone else, and even if mine are different, then I'm still held and respected for my, for those differences, and then there's just a genuine love that I exist in this world, whether you agree with me all the time or not. And that's Melissa Stanton's formula for belonging, and I think authentic belonging, like when we really feel accepted for who we are, it actually promotes a sense of psychological safety and allows us to feel valued, and so you know, underneath all of that is then how are we doing that?
LaKesha Kimbrough:in our library spaces and via our library services.
Linda Braun:I think that is. I love that dissection of what the facets are that you need to have in place, right. And so how do you bring and it's super interesting how they intersect and you can't just say, well, we have a good sense of belonging because we're authentic or whatever. Right, you have to have all of those things to help a teenager or whoever you're working with know that they truly belong and that you're not going to. Because I think sometimes the fear of people is that, well, I've got this trust and relationship and belonging now, but what if I screw up? Right, what's going to happen? And that's, I think, one of the reasons why you have to all of those together.
LaKesha Kimbrough:And if we screw up, we have a system for repair, right, because we will all mess up, the teens will mess up, we will mess up, and what is that system of repair? Because, I think I think that's also a key component of belonging is knowing I can mess up, yeah, and that that there will be an opportunity to repair. Yeah, mess up, yeah, right, and that's, that's critical, and equity work as well, and in our equity journeys.
Isabelle Briggs:Something that made me think about two that I wanted to circle back to. Something I thought about earlier was like example well, I tried to get teens to participate and they did, and that, I think, speaks to I. What was I thinking about? I was thinking about, yes, that that's true, that happens all the time. We're always trying things and they're not working, and I feel like there is frequently a it's more comfortable, when that happens, to give up. But I think that with teens, with equity, with justice, with all of these things that we're talking about, is like that, being in the middle ground and being in a place of like we can't, we're not, we haven't perfected this yet, but we have to keep going and we have to keep trying.
Isabelle Briggs:And a metaphor that I always thought about in teens services was it's like building a fire and you don't just.
Isabelle Briggs:I think this is a quote that a coworker gave to me from like David Bowie or something where he was talking I don't know I'm going to paraphrase something that he maybe said but like you don't just if you try to start fire, you don't just like give up after the first time. You're like well, I tried to start fire, I guess I'm not going to have that warmth. Like you keep, you keep that ember burning, you keep that little spark, you add to it slowly and slowly and you don't give up. You have to keep sort of the thing alive and keep blowing on it and it might take a really long time to get anything started, but the I don't know. And there's something there about about being in that space of like, well, we have something that's not perfect but we're trying, we can't give up on it yet because this matters. And I think about, like the law, if the goal is belonging equity and teens, or like, you can't give up on it, you have to kind of keep that fire going.
Linda Braun:That seems like a really perfect way to end this podcast. Thank you, Isabelle, for talking with us today. That was amazing and I think we will have to have you come back. Bye, everybody.