Teens volunteer at Central Library

Queens Library’s Saturday Science Labs have become a popular destination for seven- to ten-year-olds who crowd the library’s Children’s Room to participate in hands-on science experiments, even though it’s a coveted day off from school.
In early April, the Science Lab began a project to hatch and raise their own butterflies. They received the caterpillars via mail order and carefully monitored their metamorphoses into cocoons, and then into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies. They were carefully nourished on sugar water dropped onto flowers and fruit slices. In mid-May, the children met to release them into the spring sunshine, observing a phenomenon that urban kids rarely get to experience.
Since mid-winter, Queens Library’s Central Library has had the assistance of two Discovery Teens, who plan and conduct a science-based curriculum under the careful guidance of Youth Services Manager Lynn Gonen and Assistant Manager Carol Goldman. The Discovery Teens are funded through a grant from the Altman Foundation. The Discovery Teens are working now in preparation for much expanded science-based programming that will be part of the Children’s Library Discovery Center opening in 2009 adjacent to the Central Library. The Discovery Teens received 50 hours of training at the New York Hall of Science. They are a huge hit. and have experimented with magnetism, learned about wind, dissected flowers, planted seeds and more to help kids learn about the natural world at the library.
Discovery Teens Rachael Clarke is a freshman at Queens College. “Liz” Neirwantee Misir will be entering the New York Institute of Technology next fall.
The program is inspiring to the young children who attend, and simultaneously, more resume-worthy than the usual kinds of jobs available to 18- and 19-year olds.