The study of a middle school social studies project this article addresses occurred in the national capital region of the United States, where perceptions of ''patriotism'' and xenophobic immigration policies were the subjects of frequent media reports. With this examination the authors considered the overarching research question ''How do middle school students in a Professional Development School describe and illustrate citizenship when given access to multimodal texts and media (e.g., digital photography and slam poetry)?'' The authors called on young adolescents to create slam poems with incorporated images to address the question ''What does it mean to be a citizen?''; the authors then examined products of this project, including surveys and slam poems, to address this research query. The results of this study revealed that teachers' employment of alternative and multimodal texts--in a context supported by the structures of a PDS partnership--can motivate students to share more expansive perspectives about what they believe makes a ''citizen.'' Such instructional activities, research inquiries, and broad concepts of citizenship are increasingly important in our ever more diverse schools and in our more global world. NAPDS Essentials Addressed: #4/A shared commitment to innovative and reflective practice by all participants; #8/Work by college/university faculty and P-12 faculty in formal roles across institutional settings.