Samantha Smith Challenge 2025-2026 Guidelines

Find your tree!

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING MEETS SERVICE LEARNING

Samantha Smith Challenge 2025-26 – A New Look

The Samantha Smith Challenge is getting a redesign.

Instead of ending the year with a big celebration of student projects, we’re flipping the script — and starting with a launch. Think inspiration over culmination.

Now, the Challenge kicks off with a high-energy event that sparks curiosity, introduces students to real-world issues, and helps them gear up to take action. It’s not about what they’ve done — it’s about what they’re about to do.

More momentum. More relevance. More impact — right from the jump!

Samantha Smith’s Story

The Challenge begins with, and is inspired by, Samantha’s story. If you aren’t yet familiar with her story, read a summary here.

Or watch a news report of her journey.

Courage turns fear into compassionate understanding.

Like Samantha, be willing to listen, learn others’ stories, and find the truth. She built bridges of understanding with people she had been told were different.

Check out Julia Butterfly Hill – Americans Who Tell The Truth, her story and her quotation:

We all have our own version of a tree-sit that’s out there waiting for us. It’s our life’s calling. There’s a “tree” for every one of us, and this tree can call us to be bigger than we believe ourselves to be and to create a life that is more amazing than we can imagine. What’s your tree?

Like Julia, Samantha found her tree – and you can, too!

What’s the Challenge?

The Samantha Smith Challenge has been an important part of AWTT’s education program since 2015 – a decade of young people seeking truth, building connections, taking action, and creating inspirational art.

Choose a problem you care about—social, political, environmental—and take action to make a difference. Speak up about your issue—climate change, racial justice, poverty, voting rights, mental health . . . You choose what inspires you!
Build research & critical thinking skills. Investigate your topic deeply, ask big questions, and find smart solutions.
Use your voice. Just like Samantha, your voice matters.
Be inspired by courageous Truth Tellers in the Americans Who Tell the Truth Portrait Gallery
Use the creative arts – visual arts, music, drama, a speech, a website – to tell your truth and make change.
Create a community celebration. Share your work to inspire others, start conversations. Be the catalyst for change in your community!

The world needs your voice! You have the power to speak up, take action, and inspire others—just like Samantha.

Key Dates

Sept. 17, 2025 – March 2, 2026
Registration

Nov. 13, 2025
Samantha Smith Challenge Launch! Orono High School, Orono, ME

Nov. 17 – May 8, 2026
Connect with AWTT and AWTT portrait subjects.
Plan and implement a project.
Connect with other SSC Schools.

May 4 – June 5, 2026
Community Celebrations

Encourage young citizens to listen, get to know each other, and work for the common good. Honor Samantha and join this year’s Samantha Smith Challenge.

Prepare for the Challenge

The following guidelines are meant to help teachers and students. Use whichever activities help you and your students address the issues you identify as important and help you take action!

What does it mean to be a Truth Teller?

Essential Questions:

Why is truth important in our world?
What causes truth to be compromised?

Discuss the following ideas of Truth:

Foundational Truths: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution express our ideals of equality and justice, which are defined truths of our nation.
Truth and Trust: Unless people try to tell each other the truth as they know it, they cannot trust each other. And, obviously, any relationship, personal or public, fails without trust.
True Challenges: Unless we are willing to name the true causes of a problem, we cannot fix it. For instance, if we deny that the burning of fossil fuels plays a role in climate change, we will not be able to avert climate catastrophe.
True Knowledge: If we don’t teach our true history, its shame as well as its nobility, we cannot know who we are. People who don’t know themselves are dangerous to themselves and to others because they act from self-serving myths.

Complete these Lessons:

Who are the AWTT portrait subjects?

What are Truth Teller Characteristics?

Introductory Lesson for Speaking Truth to Youth

Let music inspire you!

“Music opens the heart so the mind can learn.” – Noel Paul Stookey

What music moves you?
What music moves you to action, to work for the common good?
Identify two songs that open your heart, engage your mind, and move you to action.

Listen here for a couple of songs to get you started.

It’s Who We Are by AWTT Truth Teller Reggie Harris
In These Times by AWTT Truth Teller Noel Paul Stookey
I was Born by Hanson
Come Together Now Haiti by Michael W. Smith

And join this group taking on the world!

“This World is on Fire” (Alicia Keys cover) by GEMS Modern Academy MODERNISTS and Mister Ritz

Choose an important issue!

Individual students, a group, or an entire class pick a meaningful issue – a problem in the community, state, country or the world that matters to them, a concern that they are motivated to help solve.

Look at the recent AWTT portrait of Julia Butterfly Hill, read her biography, and think about her words.

It’s impossible not to make a difference. The question is not “How can I, one person, make a difference?” The question is “What kind of difference do I want to make?

But first…

Understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Brené Brown on Empathy

Approaches to choosing an issue:

Have the class brainstorm together.
Present an issue that you know is of concern in the community.
Invite a panel of community members to talk with your class about community concerns/issues.
Go to the AWTT website for ideas. Use the Themes filtering tool on the Portrait Galleries page to focus on particular issues, or read about issues that are of concern to specific portrait subjects.

Discovery! Do research and find the facts about the issue.

Suggested approaches:

Students generate a list of questions about all the things they want to know or understand about their chosen topics.
Individually or in teams, students find answers to the questions and become fact-gathering machines!
Go to the Portrait Galleries on the AWTT website and explore by themes (using the “Filter by…” drop-down menu). See if the student-chosen issue is represented there. If so, read about the portrait subjects who have addressed that issue. Use them as starting points.
Use the resources listed on the portrait pages.
Contact AWTT if there is a living portrait subject with whom your students may want to connect. Many of them are happy to speak with students! ([email protected])
Interview local stakeholders (people concerned about the issue).
- Why is this issue important to them?
- What connection does this issue have to their identity?
- What are they doing to address the issue?
- What is their strategy/plan for making a long-term difference?
- What are the obstacles to improving this issue?
- What else needs to be done?
- How can we help?

Create a message!

Determine your audience – Parents? Teachers? Lawmakers? Other students? People in your community?
State the issue the individual, group, or class has selected as a question, e.g.,
- Why are there homeless people in my community?
- What should the minimum wage be?
- What kind of energy can take us sustainably into the future?
- How can our school/town reduce its carbon footprint?
- What can we do to address bullying in our school?

Tell the story of your issue
- Pick one incident or critical moment and tell it as a first person story (as though you were Barbara Johns, Samantha Smith, or Abraham Lincoln).
- Check out storytelling suggestions from This I Believe (This I Believe Essay Writing Guidelines).

Decide the purpose of your message or action!

Consider the following possibilities:

Help people in their communities to re-imagine where they live.
Provoke local authorities by calling out an injustice in the community.
Inspire people to join the fight against climate change, homelessness, inequality, etc.
Shed light on a practice or event most people don’t know or don’t understand.
Encourage or challenge people in power who are doing helpful/not-helpful work.

Use the power of the Arts to make your message come alive!

The arts create a context for conversation. The creative arts cause people to ask questions that need to be asked.

Make paintings, original musical compositions, essays, theater skits, or any other form of creative expression that communicates the identified concern and responds to the academic needs of your classroom. (Some students may choose their medium while others may be working in a specific class that teaches drawing or painting, theater, or film-making, where the medium will be defined by the teacher.)

Check out some examples of delivering messages of truth and hope using the creative arts:
- “Lost Voices” (Button Poetry video)
  Darius Simpson & Scout Bostley – Lost Voices
- One Person by Monte Selby and the 2017 SSC Participants
  One Person : Samantha Smith Challenge

Share your project with AWTT

Submit your project participation reports by May 1, 2025, to Connie Carter.

Celebrate!!

Choose one of the following:

School Celebration

Invite other teachers and students to view your projects in your classroom.
Take over the hallways – display your art.
Ask for a time when you can be the docents of your projects and have students and teachers experience your work through your eyes and voices.
Use a parent conference time to also share your SSC projects.

Community Celebration

Exhibit your project at your local library, art museum, town hall, or community center.
Meet with your town government, school board, and local organization representing your issue.
Plan a conversation time at a local coffee shop or restaurant when you can have “table conversations” about your issues.

Beyond your Community

Write letters about your issue to your state representatives and senators.
Write letters to your representatives in the U.S. Congress (House and Senate).
Contact local TV and radio stations to share your work.
Create a video about your issues and share it with any of the above.
Write a letter to the editor or an op-ed piece for your local paper.