Students at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine recently engaged in a collaborative, station-based exploration of “Courageous Citizens” through student artwork and four Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits. Through structured discussion, close looking, and reflective writing, social studies and art students analyzed how AWTT portrait subjects used their voices to create change and then considered their own role as courageous citizens. 

After watching Chloe Maxmin’s Speaking Truth to Youth video, students observed and discussed portraits of courageous citizens Lily Yeh, Russell Libby, Van Jones, and Alice Waters to help them understand the importance of their own voices. They read the biography and quotation of each portrait and chose one word that came to mind. 

After looking carefully at the portrait of Lily Yeh, one student chose “meaningful” as the word that came to mind and shared that “the portrait relates to the world right now because as a society we are struggling with acting as a community.” The student reflected that their voice is important “because it’s a gift and I should share it with the world for people who can’t.”