Most of my students have grown up in a conservative, rural area of Oklahoma, where children are still taught to be seen and not heard. Consequently, we sometimes have difficulty getting our students to talk, let alone write. I have found Seeing & Writing a wonderful textbook for teaching students how to make connections, not only between visual images and the written word, but also from media to the culture surrounding them. One particularly effective example happened when I asked my students just to look at "Retrospect: Reel Native Americans" and take no more than three minutes to write a response to the photographs. Weatherford is located in the heart of Southern Cheyenne Arapaho territory, yet many students feel little connection to our Native American population. Invited to share their responses, students began to examine some of their own stereotypes about Indians. Their responses ranged from the politically correct to passionate argument over past injustices. Next, they read Sherman Alexie’s short essay on "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" and were asked to respond to Alexie’s statement that "a smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike." This led to more questions and a growing awareness that most of us weren't sure about whether or not we agreed with Alexie’s statement. A few of us decided to visit the Cheyenne Cultural Center in Clinton, about fifteen miles down the road. Although the cultural center is located on a main road, no one in the group had ever visited the site. Lawrence Hart, a peace chief for the Cheyenne people, graciously received us and spoke about the Cheyenne heritage. From there, we traveled to the recently dedicated national historic site of the Battle of Washita, known to some as the site of the "Washita massacre," where we met history teacher and park ranger Steve Black, who gave a balanced historical account of both the United States army's and the Cheyenne peoples' perspective about the loss of life that occurred there on November 27, 1868, under the direction of General George Custer. We walked and talked with Ranger Black, and later shared a picnic and writing session at the site. When we shared our writing, many of us compared and contrasted the drama and bloodshed that had taken place on what was now such a peaceful spot of prairie. At the end of the visit, each student voiced a marked change in appreciation of our local history. Later, each created his or her own "fences," as Alexie termed paragraphs, to describe the conflict. In this way, we moved from viewing images, to writing short responses, reading essays, performing primary research, and, finally, writing well-thought-out essays that incorporated creativity, higher-order cognition, and an ability to connect media with real life.