June 27, 2023
Many young people have difficulty with their relationships with social media and ‘influencers’ that can sometimes overwhelm their lives.
How can reflecting on different concepts of time contextualize students’ experiences in the bigger picture and make them feel like they belong to something larger than themselves? One strategy we can use to inspire students is the Timeline Toolⓒ, a visual thinking organizer. It was designed to encourage students to imagine different periods of time which have no relation to their own and reflect on learning from the past to build a better world. This process may enrich students’ understanding of the challenges of being empathic and caring for living things beyond their own timeframe. The benefit of exploring their own identity and behavior in different contexts, from what they can imagine and are comfortable with to what is unknown, is that it can help students develop a greater understanding of their place in their world at this time.
The Timeline Toolⓒ can help students think about time in critical, creative, and purposeful ways. By thinking deeply and working through the Timeline questions, students can indicate how clearly they can remember the past and imagine the future to consider the benefits of these scenarios.
Timeline Questions:
1. How clearly out of 10 can you remember what happened today? /10
2. Choose one past or negative (-) number e.g. -3 months and one future or positive (+) number e.g. +500 years.
How clearly out of 10, can you remember the past e.g. -3 months ago? /10
How clearly out of 10, can you imagine what the future will look like e.g. +500 years? /10
3. Give two (2) reasons why:
Reflecting on the past could help us and our world:
a)
b)
Imagining the future could help us and our world:
a)
b)
The Timeline Toolⓒ can be used by all teachers. For example, in P.E. students can reflect on how activity levels have dropped as a result of industrialization and technological advances to make workplace and recreational spaces more sedentary. They can imagine the impact of these factors on people’s health and fitness in the future and what should be changed to improve the situation.…
