Most seventh grade students partially define themselves through everyday media messages. As a part of understanding how these images and the media impacts their lives, the author collaborated with her colleagues to develop a unit to help teens learn how visual messages such as those in pictures, media icons, logos, slogans, clothing, toys, and billboards can significantly impact how teens represent themselves through the media. They created a series of lessons over the course of two years that asked students to use photographs, PowerPoint, narrative, and journal writing to describe and understand how their personal responses were influenced by various media messages. Their experiment revealed that visual images unconsciously shape their students' thinking and their perception of the world. The author suggests that teachers should work together and develop lessons that will help students explicitly understand these mediated messages. (Contains 5 teaching resources and 6 online visual literacy resources.)