than 100 portrait paintings in traveling exhibits titled Ameri- cans Who Tell the Truth. They are helping individuals learn to embody patience, perseverance and compassion, while enhancing their understanding of sustainability, social justice, civic activism, democracy and civil rights, via both historical role models and contemporary mentors such as environmental activist Bill McKibben, conservationist Terry Tempest Williams and renowned climate scientist James Hansen. “We don’t need to invent the wheel, because we have role models that have confronted these issues and left us a valuable legacy,” remarks Shetterly. In 2004, he collaborated to produce a companion curriculum with Michele Hemenway, who continues to offer it in Louisville, Kentucky, elementary, middle and high schools. Hemenway also teaches Art in Education at Jefferson Community & Technical College and 21st-Century Civics at Bellamine University, both in Louisville. Out of many, she shares a particularly compelling ex- ample of a student transformed due to this learning method: “I taught a young girl studying these true stories and portraits from the third through fifth grades when she took her place in a leadership group outside the classroom. Now in middle school, she is doing amazing things to make a difference in her community,” says Hemenway. Reflecting on her own life, deciding what she cared about most and what actions she wanted to take, plus her own strengths, helped the student get a blighted building torn down, document and photograph neighborhood chemical dumping and have it stopped and succeed in establishing a community garden, a factor known to help reduce crime. Among Shetterly’s collection is the portrait of John


Hunter, a teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia, who devised the World Peace Game for his fourth grade students. Chil- dren learn to communicate, collaborate and take care of each other as they work to resolve the game’s conflicts. The game triggers an eight-week transformation of the children from students of a neighborhood public school to citizens of the world. Demonstrating transformational learning at its best, they experience the connectedness of the global community through the lens of economic, social and environmental crises, as well as the imminent threat of war. Hunter and his students are now part of a new film, World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements, which reveals how effective teach- ing can help unleash students’ full potential.


Professor Emeritus Peter Gray, of Boston College, who re- searches comparative, evolutionary, developmental and edu- cational psychology, believes the transformational method will be accepted as part of the increased demand to integrate enlightened educational approaches in public schools. The author of Free to Learn notes, “A tipping point can occur. It’s happened before, when women won the right to vote, slavery was abolished and recently when gays were openly accepted in the military.” Weil agrees that when more individuals commit to


working toward a sustainable and just world, it will happen. “What’s more worthy of our lives than doing this work for our children and coming generations?” she queries. “How can we not do this for them if we love them?”


Linda Sechrist is a Natural Awakenings senior staff writer. For recorded source interviews and additional perspective, visit her website, ItsAllAboutWe.com.


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Terry Tempest Williams portrait by Robert Shetterly


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