Spotlight 4 Success

Mindfulness For Kids At The Library

American Book Company Season 1

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A busy conference hallway can spark the best ideas, and our conversation with Tiffany Williams proves it. As the Children’s Services Manager at the Heard St. Andrews Library in the Charleston area, Tiffany has built a practical approach to child wellbeing that fits right between storytime and stacks. She walks us through Wellness in the Stacks, a program suite that uses kids’ yoga, simple cooking classes, and even World Labyrinth Day to teach mindfulness, self-regulation, and calm.

Website: spotlight4success.com

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I'm Devin Pintozi, your host. We are here at the South Carolina School School Librarians Conference in wonderful Columbia, South Carolina. And we are so excited to have with us today Tiffany Williams. Tiffany, thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

Tiffany Williams is a uh school librarian. She's a specialist at the um children's can you tell me your the the name of the librarian library?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. I'm at the Heard St. Andrews Library, and I am the Children's Services Manager.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So Heard St. Andrews Library, Children's Services Manager. Um so happy to have you with us today.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

So can you tell me a bit, Tiffany, about what brings you here to this conference?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Um mostly here to be able to network and learn from other South Carolina library workers to take in new information to get new ideas for programs. And I'm also presenting later on today. So I'll be sharing some of my information as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Tiffany, what are you what are you presenting on?

SPEAKER_01:

My session is called Wellness in the Stacks, and it's about the different programs that I've planned for children that promote wellness and mindfulness, and um just different things like that. So yoga, um cooking programs, uh World Labyrinth Day, just a lot of interesting programs that help people learn to focus on mindfulness and just trying to take care of themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that is wonderful. What a great thing you're doing uh there in uh Charleston, giving that a go. Yeah. Um that's great. And uh so uh that's what you're doing here. And um um is there something you would like to like as a what is your takeaway from this conference? You're like, this is really why I'm coming.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh really wanted to be able to just connect with other library workers um and see what they're doing at their libraries and just to get ideas. Um I think that's really what this is all about is being able to network and connect with other library workers and uh get those ideas and see how we can use them in our library. I'm also here to share my ideas and hopefully somebody will be able to take that back to their library and just, you know, and use it and it works out for them as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. Um can you tell me a bit what made you decide you wanted to get into becoming a librarian?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Um I kind of just fell into it. Um my aunt is a librarian, my mom is a lot was a librarian, and so it they inspired me to go ahead and be a librarian as well. And I have a daughter who is 26, and she is also a librarian. Oh, wow. So we have four librarians in our family.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, that is unusual. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's great. Well, it's great that yeah, y'all are involved in that work and helping so many children in this case with your position in the local community. That's great. Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. This again, this is uh Tiffany Williams joining us as a librarian in the Charleston uh area of South Carolina here at the South Carolina Librarian Association Conference. Thank you once again.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having me.