At the end of the 2011-12 version of the project course Schools Across Borders, Schools Across Time (SABSAT), a high school senior wrote a series of letters reflecting on the experience of participating in an unusual course with an unusual outcome. In the letters, the student wanted to evoke what was personal and what was critical--to herself, her classmates, her school, her America, and her world. The course consisted of two connected projects: the first was the development of materials for a student-led workshop at the 2011 meeting of the Progressive Education Network. The students presented and discussed a documentary survey of selected high schools from across the United States in the workshop, which was called "The School That We'd Like." After that workshop, students engaged in the profound experience of creating a new curriculum to carry on the work of the course. They framed and developed a course that focuses on the intellectual heritage of progressive education in the life of the Francis W. Parker School. They suggested that students would be the best teachers of this course, and they planned to draw on the alumni of the SABSAT course for the past two years to staff the program. At the end of the course, they developed a sample lesson in school history, which they then taught to the current eighth grade, the students they wanted to enroll in the course in the following year as ninth graders. The author's first letter addresses her students in the model lesson, the eighth graders. The eighth graders were already familiar with the author, since she was at the time the president of the school's student government, a 400-member, student-led assembly that meets once a week. The sample lesson focused on the origin and purpose of student government, and as it turned out, her students inspired their teacher with their respect for the institution she led. The subsequent letters address students and teachers in her own school as well as fellow American students in general.