Americans Who Tell The Truth
Mini- Research Project done by Kathy Evans Language Arts/ Skowhegan Area Middle School


book cover After sharing Robert Shetterly’s book, Americans Who Tell the Truth with my students, I wanted to take the experience one more step and have each student choose one of the portraits in the book to investigate further . I explained that what they might learn about that person could be considered
“unpatriotic” by some, but I hoped they would come to understand the hard journey each person was willing to face to uncover injustice in our world and how much bravery it took to fight those battles, sometimes all alone! I asked the students to describe in their own words what each American saw that made him or her angry enough to stand up and confront a situation they knew to be wrong! What was done to improve that wrong? How has our society improved because of the sacrifices made? Noteshare is the software that we used throughout this project, and students created a culuminating Keynote slideshow to share with the class. Student work was impressive and in many cases extremely powerful. At the end of one outstanding slideshow, not one voice could be heard, just stunned silence... a rare moment in a classroom full of restless 12 and 13 yearolds!