The journey of this book began with a simple student comment, “We learn a lot about the challenges and problems in the world, can we learn about how people overcome them?” And with that, Portraits of Resilience began. With enormous collaboration and cooperation from the USS Midway Museum, 50 sophomore students at High Tech High Media Arts were paired with 50 veterans and docents from The Midway and around San Diego. One by one, the veterans came to our school to sit down for individual portrait sessions and interviews. Students focused their interviews around three big essential questions: In what ways does war affect human resiliency, how can we resolve conflict aside from war and why do people fight? The interviews, photography, artistic direction and book publishing are all student led and generated.