While preparing for our yearly celebration of Banned Books Week, how many of us have been asked why we are celebrating banned books? It is a question which has been posed to me numerous times and based on my experiences the past four years, I have come to the decision that it is time to reframe that celebration for my Texas high school campus.

Central to this reimagined celebration has been the introduction of the Freedom Walk, an event designed to engage and enlighten my community to the challenges faced by libraries, and emphasize the fundamental rights of students to access a diverse range of information and literature in their school library. The Freedom Walk takes me outside the library and into our courtyard during lunches and allows students to choose their entry point as they travel to five stations exploring various issues centered around censorship. The issues we choose to highlight include: 1st Amendment rights, censorship terms, school district collection development and reconsideration policies, books as windows and mirrors, and voter registration/education. In addition to educating students on these issues, the goal for each station is to be as dynamic as possible to spur active participation in the discussions, so many of the stations include a game of some sort. Students who participate in our program receive a bookmark that is stamped for each station they visit. Students are asked to document their thoughts about the material presented and new insights gained after their visit on the back of their bookmarks. This serves as both a reflective exercise and a tangible reminder of their experiences during the event.

The Freedom Walk stands as a vibrant example of how interactive and thoughtful programming can ignite engagement with critical societal issues among young people. The enthusiastic response from students, with some expressing newfound interests in politics and others advocating for unrestricted access to varying viewpoints, underscores the effectiveness of the Freedom Walk in fostering a culture of inquiry and debate. This outcome aligns perfectly with the library’s vision to provide access to information and create programming that welcomes, engages and represents all community members. In response to overwhelmingly positive feedback, we are bringing back our Freedom Walk for a second year. Fortunately our celebration this year coincides with High School Voter Registration Week and so I have added another event to our week of celebration. This new celebration, Empowering Voters, is a more in-depth exploration of our fifth station of the Freedom Walk which focuses on voter registration/education. This event will feature discussions on the history of voting rights, highlight ways our young people can participate in elections outside of voting, and a student demonstration of media literacy tools. Finally, we will showcase how voters can research candidates and prepare a personalized sample ballot using the website vote411.org.

While there may be justified hesitation among librarians to highlight these two celebrations in such a prominent way, I continually refer back to the mission of school libraries. AASL states their position on the role of school libraries is that “an effective school library plays a critical role in preparing learners for life in an information-rich society”. To me this means the heart of our work is providing quality information to our users in a way that helps them become stronger thinkers. These two events take that mission and turns it into a celebration. My students deserve that.

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If you are looking for ideas to offer information to your communities on either of these celebrations, ALA has created a Reader Voter Ready campaign and updated statistics on banned books that features numerous tools libraries can use to customize their own celebrations to empower our communities. Additionally, if you are looking for a scaled back version of how I previously celebrated young voters, check out the current issue of AASL’s Knowledge Quest.