During the November professional development week, eighth-grade Language Arts teachers Laura Price and Meredith Stewart presented at the National Council of English Teachers Convention in Houston, Texas. Price and Stewart’s presentation focused on the new end of year Language Arts project, the American Vision Film Narrative, which they created with eighth-grade history teacher David Snively.

This project is a culmination of a year-long focus of the essential question, “What is America?,” and involves connections to Language Arts and History, interviews with extended community members, and creation of a metaphor to explain each student’s personal vision of and for America. Price and Stewart shared examples of student films—such as that created by ninth-grader Folu Ogundipe whose work is shared below—that celebrated the diversity of the country and the ways in which the country has not fully achieved students’ visions for it.