Hello, welcome to the careers for kids podcast for kids to learn careers.
This is Maxo Valencia and Henry Morrison is like not here today, unfortunately.
And today we have Margaret Pastel, a youth librarian.
Hello Miss Pastel.
Hello, thank you for having me.
No, no, they have problem.
Like thank you for spending your time to be on careers for kids.
We hope we have a great interview.
Now let's get started.
So tell us what you currently do right now.
Well, I'm the youth services librarian at the Westport Library in Westport, Connecticut.
So I work with children from ages birth to eighth grade, with most of a focus on kindergarten
to 14 years old.
And I have two major responsibilities, one of which is mad managing the graphic novel
fiction collection, and the other is providing introductory steam, science, technology, engineering,
arts and math programs for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
But wait, there's more.
I also help with pre literacy programs for younger children.
And I do readers advisory for everyone.
Wow, that's a lot of things.
It's cool that you're helping like lots of like people in the younger ages.
Yeah, that's kind of my wheelhouse, I think.
So tell me about your career and how you got to this position.
Sometimes I ask myself the very same question, how did I get here?
So it might take a little time to answer.
And this is what I actually consider my third career.
The first was in arts education, where I worked as a program manager and fundraiser for groups,
nonprofit groups that provided education in music, dance, theater, you name it.
Then change of my life, I became a professional mom volunteer.
So I led Girl Scout troops and Cub Scouts, I did the PTA thing, I do Sunday school and
any other volunteer activity that came up.
So finally, when I had more time for myself, I decided to head back to school and get my
Masters of Library Science and work in a library.
And the common thread through all these careers was I lifelong love of learning and doing
things, whether it was crafts, storytelling, science, the natural world, you name it.
I enjoy that.
And I love sharing it with others.
So I was able to combine all these passions of mine into one position and lucky enough
to be accepted as an intern at the Westport Library Makerspace, which started my library
career.
That's amazing.
That's like a long journey.
It is a long journey.
Anybody ever sees me on the street, they would probably look at me and say, oh, yeah, that
was a long journey with all my white hair.
But it's never too late.
Yeah.
Like, it's never too late to do things.
Right.
Or define your passion.
What is my passion?
Yeah.
What is your passion?
I like many things.
Probably like economics and like technology.
So like financial technology called FinTech.
Bitcoin?
Cryptocurrency?
Yeah, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrency, but you know, I can like look at it sometimes.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Those are two pretty diverse interests, but I'm sure you'll be able to find a pathway
with them.
There is a big demand.
I know like technology is like one of my favorite things.
I use technology every day and I always wonder like how it works.
Yeah, it was interesting.
One of my children's was a physics major and is now doing primarily coding in his career.
That's cool.
Yeah.
But he has a wide background so he can go in and address issues in different areas,
not just his coding issues.
So that's pretty good.
And what part of your job do you enjoy the most and dislike the most?
I enjoy interacting with the children the most, fostering their creativity, connecting
them to the right books, teaching them new skills, and developing a love of learning.
Also the librarians in my department are absolutely wonderful.
The most difficult thing I have is fitting all I want to do in the hours I have available
to work.
Oh, you must really enjoy your work.
I have the best job ever because it's as you said, I love what I do and I have the opportunity
to share my interests with others or to find new things.
So I'm constantly on the lookout.
I can't go anywhere, whether I'm on vacation or whatever, without seeing somebody thinking,
oh, I can make a program out of that.
Like it's better though.
It's really good that you can have a job when you wake up and you're like, let's go, I have
a job.
I can do my work.
I can have fun.
Yeah, I really think people should have a job that they look forward to doing.
And if you're not in a position that brings you some sort of satisfaction, actually, if
it's a wrong fit, it can even affect your health.
So it's always a good idea to keep looking, even if you're not interested in doing something
yet, but just being aware of what's out there.
Like step outside your comfort zone is one thing that I hear a lot here sometimes.
This is true because you don't know the connections or the skills that you might bring to another
position.
So you think so maybe your tech skill is only tech, but actually your tech is also a problem
solving skill that you have and you can apply problem solving skills to a variety of different
types of situations and jobs.
So there's always a connection to making what you do and how you might do it somewhere else
or in something else.
So was this a dream job you imagined yourself when you were a kid?
As a kid, boy, I really remember wanting to do a lot of different things.
Primarily, I didn't want a job that would do the same thing day in and day out.
So in that respect, my current job is my dream job.
And sometimes I say if I had to do it all over again, I would have gone into library
sooner or else I'd be a national park ranger.
That's cool.
I love being outdoors.
Makes sense.
So who were your main idols when you were younger?
I think mine.
I can't say I had any real idols, but I had people that inspired me, like my parents,
what they did.
And there's people I always wanted to meet like Einstein and Gandhi, Arturo Rubenstein,
James Galway, Leonard Bernstein, even Madeleine Albright.
But that came later because she was the first female secretary of state for the United States.
And I always wondered how she got there and how she could cope with that job because it's
groundbreaking for a lot of women to go into politics like that and achieve such a high
level.
So like, further like deeper, why did you pick this specific job, like elaborate on
it?
I was very lucky that this job picked me.
So as I mentioned earlier, I went back to school for my library science, masters of
library science, and there was an internship opportunity that came up.
And because of that, I applied and I got it.
And it was at the Westport Library Makerspace.
They got a huge grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, the IMLS.
And they were looking for students who could be in the makerspace.
And making was a brand new area for libraries to get involved in.
And if you know a makerspace, that's where you can go and do coding or 3D printing.
You can do circuitry.
You can do building of all sorts.
It all depends on the focus of the institution.
So I was in the makerspace, starting to do some of these programs, buying into the whole
idea that hands-on learning, experiential learning was very important.
And it was a pathway to learn new things.
And I finished my degree and I knew I wanted to be in children's.
And I wasn't focusing on, I wasn't using my degree in the makerspace.
So I was preparing to find a quote unquote real job and brought my resume over to the
manager of the children's department.
And she was kind enough.
And I asked her to look it over.
So I said it was good enough for me to send out and possibly get a job as a children's
librarian somewhere.
And she looked at it and she said, well, we just might have a position that you could
be interested in.
And we talked some more.
I found out it was the position I was interested in.
It let me use my skills developed in the makerspace, my lifelong learning, and also added on the
reading component and readers' advisory.
So I, as I said, the job kind of picked me rather than me picking the job.
It's awesome.
Yeah, that's perfect.
Like, it's amazing.
And like, I know, like you mentioned your career before this, but what made you move
on from it?
What made me move on from my career before this?
I think it was just a cycle of interests.
The more I became involved with libraries or using libraries, the more I saw and read
about libraries being a crucial, they call it a third place, a place that's not your
home and not work, but where you can meet and new people develop ideas, et cetera, to
give you a break.
Sometimes it's like a coffee house, like a Starbucks.
People go there to work and chat and stuff, but the libraries are a living entity.
They change with whatever the community needs and they provide services, good times and
bad to people who need them and might otherwise not be able to, say, afford to buy books on
Amazon all the time.
So it just seemed, it just seemed the right thing to do at that time.
And again, what I said earlier about looking for where my skill set might be, I was kind
of thinking outside the box when I went back to library school to say, what does interest
me?
So that's how I got there.
That's perfect.
That's really cool.
It's like, nice.
And what was the biggest highlight of your career?
That's hard to answer.
I'm kind of an under the radar, back room sort of worker.
I love to get things done.
I love to be the person that makes an event happen, but I don't necessarily need to be,
to get the credit for publicly.
I just need to know people where I am working, understand what my contribution is.
So at this point in my life, I am most excited about a summer program called Camp Explorer
at the Westport Library.
It's for kids ages 11 to 14, and I was able to mold it into hands on explorations of different
steam areas with really good presenters.
A professional artist did a painting workshop, a professional animation person did an animation,
stop motion animation workshop.
We have technology experts that worked with different types of coding or building programs,
makey makeys.
You just name it.
And we even had a jewelry making one.
So I try to do a variety of summertime, try something new or get a deeper understanding
of one of your passion sort of program.
And it has gone like game busters.
It's really exciting.
I think that's one of my highlights.
So what are the biggest challenges that you think can be solved by my generation that
you would want us to solve for you?
I kind of have two of those.
And the big one is just all around us right now.
Climate change.
Taking the steps necessary to slow it because we only have one earth.
And there's an Indian saying, I think it goes something like, no, now I'm going to, it just
went out of my head.
But it basically says you don't own the land.
You are holding it in trust for your children.
So our land is in trouble.
And if it's not this generation that will fix it or slow down the changes or find solutions,
it's going to be up to you kids because we all need someplace to live.
Right?
Yeah.
I know it's like, I don't think there's any planets that will have the same climate or
same habitats as Earth can.
You need like a certain place.
Yeah, or to actually get there if they find one.
Because following space.com and NASA's educational website and stuff, there's occasionally information
about planets people have found that are similar to Earth.
They think, but they're so far away.
So getting there would be a real big issue.
And that's what's so cool about to me about science fiction and fantasy.
Because if you think way back to one of these authors called Jules Verne, he wrote in the
1800s and he visualized submarines, 20,000 leagues under the sea.
He had a submarine.
He envisioned all these little things.
Even back further in history, you have Leonardo da Vinci who thought up airplanes.
He didn't have the means to build it, but he thought it up.
So people would say, oh, Leonardo, you're crazy.
This is just your imagination.
It's fantasy.
And reality comes sometimes out of science, fantasy, out of fantasy and becomes science
fiction and then becomes real.
There's so many steps to discovering new things.
You just have to be able to be the type of person to imagine it, which is again why I
like my STEAM programs, because the focus is on creativity.
And you have to, as you said earlier, think outside the box sometimes.
Yeah.
It's always good to like think and imagine, but what do you want to change?
What would make people's lives better?
It's always great.
It's just stop and think.
And it's even better to use those thoughts and execute them, like work hard to make those
thoughts come to reality.
Yes, yes.
Which is kind of like a second thing.
It would be really nice if your generation could build up tolerance for other human beings.
Fewer wars, more social good.
It's a big order.
So if someone wants to follow in your footsteps in your careers, what would you tell him or
her?
Basically, that one size career does not fit all.
You have to be up for challenges of what's changing in your job or what's changing in
you that makes you want to find a different career path.
So to do this, I would focus on the skills you have, what you enjoy doing, and then see
how they apply to different fields or areas or activities that might interest you.
And from there, you might build a network to try something new somewhere else.
Talking specifically about librarianships, libraries are crucial institutions.
As I said earlier, they provide services to people who may not be able to access or afford
them otherwise.
They are also dynamic institutions that change and respond to their community needs in good
times and especially with that.
So unfortunately, as nonprofits, they don't always have the budget for a lot of full-time
people, but you can always cobble together some part-time work.
So the pay isn't necessarily always great, and finding full-time jobs can be difficult.
However, the rewards of doing a job in any field that you love doing and you believe
has an impact on other people's lives or the future, that usually wins out over pay.
What is your main life advice for kids listening to this podcast?
I think my previous answer pretty much answers this question.
Be up for challenges and don't be stuck.
I will add that if you spend 40 hours a week in a job that for your sanity's sake and for
the sake of the people that you work with, you might as well enjoy what you're doing
and the people you are doing it with.
Otherwise, it'll be a battle every morning, like you said, every morning to get up and
get out the door and get to work.
Yeah.
Just to wake up and be like, oh, I have to work today, is this good?
I'm just going to take a toll on your emotional and mental health.
Yeah.
It's sometimes like going to school, right?
Yeah.
I like school though.
I kind of like school sometimes because I also love learning.
I love to learn things and try new things.
I'm just like a fan of school.
But I know many people have to wake up and like school today, shucks.
Yeah.
Well, you have to remember too, sometimes you need the steps to get to where you're
going.
So if you put in your time at say school, you might have the ability then to move on
to something bigger and better and what interests you most.
I have life surprise for everyone who's in these projects.
Like school is pretty important for us.
Like math is important in many fields.
Science is important in many fields.
If Elon Musk didn't know science, he definitely wouldn't be where he was today.
Even math, he wouldn't be where he was today.
And history and social studies helps us learn about the world around us and language arts
helps us write.
Like my dad has to like write so much for his work.
He wishes he got more time spending on like English.
Yes.
Yeah.
Again, you never know what skillsets you're going to need for different jobs.
This is one of the reasons I really like the liberal arts education because while you can
always get your technical skills, the ability to problem solve, to think things through,
to make the relationships between writing, having to write grants or directions or blah,
blah, blah, whatever you want to say, and the ability to actually do the project.
You have usually a better trained mind to make those jumps in associations.
So there's a lot in the news that I disagree with about going to college for just skills,
for just jobs like that, tech training.
You have to be able to lead people if you want to get further in your career.
You have to be able to troubleshoot.
You have to be able to determine what's good and what's bad, not just what is right.
I mean, there's a joke with a lot of us laypeople when we're reading manuals for new technology
that the manual was written by the programmer and not by the end user because the directions
would be totally different.
Thank you so much, Ms. Parcell, for allowing us to interview you.
Yeah, my pleasure.
I'm sure more kids will be inspired by this interview.
And whoever is listening, thanks for listening to the CareerStreetKids Podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the episode and we will see you in the next episode.
Bye.