Max and Esme

The seniors in Esme's Academy program presented posters on their action research projects yesterday evening. Esme's project was about book banning - she did a tremendous amount of background work reading legal case studies as part of the literature review, interviewed several librarians and teachers in Florida, and did an audit of the Rye City School district libraries and the Rye public library to see what proportion of the 200 most banned books were available in our district. She capped it off with practical recommendations for the district to classify/tag books based on the communities they feature (Black, LGBTQ+, Indiginous Peoples etc) to make them easier for students to find books that represent themselves. She did a fantastic job talking about her work for two hours with anyone who came by - her knowledge and enthusiasm made her a riviting speaker. So proud of her - can't wait to see what she does next!