American Library Association (Young Adult Library Services Association)

Young Adult Library Services Association will partner with the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies to train 11,000 library staff across all 50 states and the five U.S. territories to facilitate computer science and computational thinking through the lens of connected learning. Computational thinking is increasingly recognized as an essential skill to prepare teens for personal and professional success in the increasingly the digital and global economy. The project will use a cost effective train-the-trainer approach, initially offering training to state library agency staff, who will then provide professional development to youth-serving librarians across their service areas. This project builds on the American Library Association's Ready to Code Initiative, supported by Google, reinforcing libraries' roles as essential players in our computer science education ecosystem, and leverages connections made at a 2017 national forum hosted by YALSA to better understand the professional development needs of state library youth consultants related to teen services.