Kim, I can't believe you posted a message telling everyone,

"Don't read books."

You didn't read the whole message.

"Don't read books and you'll risk missing out

on a world of knowledge."

Wow, that sounds much better in context.

Do we even have to do the video now?

- No, I think we nailed it.

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KIM: Have you ever tried watching a movie

starting halfway through?

Or been mad at your best friend for not taking your calls,

only to find out she dropped her phone in a hot tub?

Or what about when a normally friendly student

is rude to you,

and then you find out he's going through something heavy?

These are all relating to context.

Context is vital in understanding

the world around us.

It changes our view of situations all the time,

so the more context we have,

the better we can navigate our world

and empathize with people around us.

Contextualization is clearly important in our daily lives

and is just as important in history.

When we start to learn about an event or a person in the past,

we have to try and understand

the historical situation, as well:

What was going on in the region and the world at the time?

Whatever it sounds like now,

we have to ask about the social, cultural, political,

and economic atmosphere at that time and place.

Obviously, there are a lot of layers

to the process of contextualization.

But the process is crucial.

Kim's absolutely right.

For one, contextualization gives us

a clearer understanding of the past,

but even more importantly,

it helps students avoid presentism:

the act of seeing the past through a lens of today.

Without contextualization,

it's easy to look back at events in history and say,

"What were they thinking?

What was wrong with those people?"

That's presentism, and it's a dangerous trap

we want to help our students to avoid.

It's easy enough to look at the atrocities of the past

like the Holocaust, slavery, and imperialism,

and think, "Those were evildoers and now we know better."

But that perspective ignores loads of historical context

that can help us actually understand these tragedies,

and therefore understand how to avoid them in the future.

I'm not trying to be a downer.

But I do feel pretty strongly about contextualization.

This skill requires a kind of historical empathy,

and let's face it, empathy is something

that most teenagers need to work on.

Okay, frankly, so do a lot of adults.

But at least with our students, we can come at this

as a new and wonderful thing to learn,

and not a criticism of their character.

It will come as a surprise to no one

that this new skill takes a bit of practice to get right.

So let's break it down.

The contextualization tool is a pretty busy process,

but that's because contextualization

is a pretty busy thinking practice.

It requires kids to periodize,

pick out important events, map those events,

and determine how those other events

influenced the historical event in question.

Overall, it's an eight-step process.

It's not easy at first, I'm not going to lie.

But if difficult skills were easy to learn,

then I'd be an Olympic figure skater by now

and Kim would know how to juggle.

That's fair.

Figure skating, juggling, and contextualization

all take practice.

Let's walk through how to develop this tool

with your students, step by step.

No skates or bowling pins required.

The first step on the contextualization tool

is a nice warm-up for students.

They start by writing down the question they want answered.

For example: "Why did an agrarian society

form in this location?"

Or, "How is industrialization possible?"

We provide these questions in our progression activities,

but you could use this tool

for any additional question you'd like to explore.

Go wild!

Next, students will make note

of the historical event, process, person, or source

being studied.

See? Two easy questions to start with,

so students can feel what it's like to get it right.

In step two, the tool asks students

to consider time and place.

They'll start by identifying

when the event, process, person, or source took place,

and mark it on their timeline,

along with adding the start and end dates.

So that could be someone's life span,

a regime's time in power,

a date of publication, and so on.

Next, they'll mark on the map where the event took place.

If you're counting along, that's step three.

Steps two and three will probably vary quite a bit,

depending on what you're contextualizing.

For example, identifying the start and end dates,

and location, of the Russian Revolution

will be pretty straightforward.

But a topic like industrialization

is more complex.

Of course, you know your students best,

so provide guidance for any topics

you think they might struggle with.

This brings us to step four.

Now it's time to make a list of four kinds of historical events.

Those that were: one, happening at the same time

as the event being studied, in any location;

two, in the same place and at the same time

as the event being studied;

three, immediately before this time period;

and four, 50 to 100 years before the event.

It's really helpful to model the use of this tool,

especially early in the course.

You can do this as a class, or if you think your students

can work on this effectively in groups,

go for it.

If needed, don't hesitate to point students

toward material that might help them generate events.

Okay, so, thanks to Colby, we've got the events,

but now we have to think about the culture at the time,

which means we're taking that fifth step.

What can students add

about governmental and political systems,

economic systems, and religious systems?

Here again, you can do this as a class or in groups,

particularly early in the course.

It's a lot of details to wrangle,

since, of course, culture is a pretty layered subject.

So, once students have nicely filled out

their "list of events" box,

it's time to categorize.

Also known as step six.

Students will put a star next to any of the events

they think will help explain the topic of study.

They'll also label any events

that connect to our course frames

of communities, networks, and production and distribution.

COLBY: That brings us to step seven,

our penultimate step.

Now, students will go back to the timeline

they created earlier

and add the events they starred to their timeline,

as well as those that connect to the frames.

At this point, your students have done a lot of work,

and it helps to recognize that as we encourage them to finish.

They've placed the event in space and time,

generated a list of events that might connect to the event,

categorized those events

and made a selection of which seem most relevant,

and then placed those events on a timeline.

They have created two visual cues,

between the timeline and the map,

that can help them think more clearly about other events

that might have shaped the main event

that they're thinking about.

In other words, their event has been--

you guessed it-- contextualized.

Kim, are they done?

Almost.

There's just one very key step remaining.

Time to synthesize this information.

That means students get to write.

Now, considering how much work

they've already put into contextualization,

we're not going to ask students to churn out an entire essay.

One paragraph is plenty of writing

for students to bring together

all their hard work contextualizing.

The tool will help them write this paragraph,

with guiding questions like...

COLBY: What else was happening during that time?

KIM: Was your topic of study

local, regional, national, or global?

What type of location was it?

COLBY: What do the frames suggest

about the event or source

at that time and in that place?

KIM: How do modern-day attitudes, values, and concepts

differ from those at the time of your topic of study?

COLBY: With all the information they've gathered in the tool

and guided by these prompts,

students will be well-equipped to write this paragraph.

And they should feel as accomplished

as a figure skater nailing that first triple axel,

or as someone juggling knives and chainsaws

but only losing, like, two fingers.

Which is fine, because that juggler

still has just enough remaining fingers

to count out our eight steps of contextualization.

That was morbid, Colby.

We know eight steps are a lot to learn and teach,

so we definitely recommend

practicing with this tool yourself

before bringing it to your class.

The more comfortable you are

guiding your students through this process,

the better it is for them and for you.

Check out our blogs on contextualization

to get an expert teacher take on this process,

and, as always, turn to the community to talk with other teachers.

Hey, do I sound like an infomercial?

- I thought we were infotainment.

Well, then you're info a shock.

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