For many school librarians, it is already time to welcome our new students back to our spaces. We do so with hopefully well rested minds ready to rekindle traditional programming with new ideas. ALA’s Banned Books Week will be celebrated October 5-11, 2025 with a theme of “Censorship is so 1984. Read For Your Rights.” Many librarians I know personally have shied away from celebrating this week due to immense pressure in their communities. While I have not yet experienced that kind of pressure, a few years ago I decided to change my approach to Banned Books Week. Instead of highlighting titles and statistics around book banning, I wanted to actively educate my community about their freedom to read and their rights as readers and so the Freedom Walk was created. This program features five stations that identify components of the censorship issue. The stations review specific federal and state laws that address censorship attempts and how our current laws impact a student’s right to access information. Other stations review censorship terms, explain the concept of books as windows and mirrors, walk students through our district’s collection development policy and a final station focuses on elected positions that are responsible for policies impacting our community’s right to read. A full explanation of how the Freedom Walk looks on my high school campus can be found on this webinar hosted in November 2024 by ALA’s Sara Jaffarian award committee.

The discussions I have had with my students after our Freedom Walks have been nothing short of inspiring and many of my students asked how they can voice their opinion on this topic. It caused me to consider, “Was there a way the Freedom Walk could inspire students to become more engaged in our community?” Historically, the youth vote has always been the smallest percentage in elections at all levels: city, state and national. Older voters have always shamed our younger friends for this, but what steps have we taken to help them realize the importance of WHY they should be voting and what tools have we provided to make it easier to register and actually vote? There are not too many students focused on tariffs, tax policies or medicare/medicaid decisions, but there are MANY who have opinions on issues directly impacting them such as access to information or cell phone and social media use, to name just two. These questions of how my students can voice their opinion prompted me to incorporate a new part of our Freedom to Read Week activities, that of civic engagement.

High School Voter Registration Week will be celebrated nationally this year the week of September 23-27, a date close enough to fit with our Freedom to Read Week activities. Where I live, it is state law that public high schools offer two opportunities for students to register to vote, so this opportunity helps me fulfill this requirement. We have always hosted voter registration drives on my campus, but this year I am providing an opportunity for my students to lead these drives. I have partnered with The Civics Center to train my students on how to organize a successful high school voter registration drive before our state’s fall registration deadline. The Civic Center provides online training specifically tailored for my state registration laws and offers fantastic toolkits for my students to use to personalize our drive. Included in the toolkits are visual templates to help promote the drive on social media and with signage around campus. This year my Model UN class has agreed to lead our fall drive and I am banking on the fact that students listen a little more closely to their peers versus adults when they are speaking about the importance of voter registration. My ultimate hope is that the conversations that begin at this drive stretch beyond the day, and voting conversations among my students become more common than they are now. Stay tuned for an update on the outcome of our drive!

In the current climate surrounding libraries, information and politics I know combining these two awareness weeks may seem risky to some. In my rationale, I always fall back on a core mission of a librarian: to provide accurate information to our patrons. As a professional, I understand my role is never to persuade someone’s opinion, simply provide information, and that is what I believe we accomplish in both our Freedom Walk and our voter registration drives. How are you helping your students access information about their rights as readers and the voting process?