About CHART

  • Defined: the ability to draw a conclusion from different resources.

    Key Points: history, as written and taught, is always an incomplete story

    Example: present students with different primary source documents to lead them toward different conclusions. Have them engage, compare source documents, and re-evaluate conclusions with new material.

  • Defined: meaningful, accurate representation is essential for human and community well-being and for a deep understanding of any modern or historical event

    Key Points: balanced representation among demographic groups is deeply missing throughout much of written history

    Example: consider what experiences and whose perspectives have been left out of the story, who the storyteller and intended audience is, and why that might be. Consider ways to balance the narrative

  • Defined: rapid, extreme climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions

    Key Points: carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas derived from burning fossil fuels

    Example: examine modern and historic shorelines at the sites, and observe changing sea levels throughout time. Look at the time intervals of previous episodes of sea level change, and the associated climate extremes

  • Define: stories are at risk from being undertold, and sites that can help us tell these stories are at risk due to climate change, particularly in these cases from sea level rise, increasingly powerful storms, and sociopolitical events

    Key Points: stories are a foundational part of what makes us human, and all people have a right to the stories of their ancestors, culture, and heritage. Stories also connect us to places and to each other.

    Example: think about how far back you know the stories of your family’s ancestors. What influences how many generations back your family has knowledge of where they are from?

  • Define: stories have the power to bring truth, healing, and wisdom. They can shape our thinking, help us understand one another, and solve problems greater than any one person or group

    Key Points: Missing histories often result from historical violence between groups of people, including colonization, forced assimilation, and enslavement trafficking. These are stories which require effort, research, and focus to restore. When found, even in pieces, they have the power to guide a process of reconciling justice.

    Example: Have your students name famous people, and write the names on the board. Now ask them to identify famous women, people of color, women of color, queer people, and queer people of color. Evaluate if there are racial, gender, sexual orientation, other demographic variations in the people whose names the students were able to recall. Ask them what makes a person famous, and why people should be famous.

THEMES

  • While the planet has always fluctuated in temperature, climate change due to human activity is causing rapid and extreme change. Fossil fuels burned to produce energy release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one of many greenhouse gases, made up of molecules that trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. A blanket of greenhouse gases is why the Earth is a livable temperature instead of being frozen, but too dense a layer of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing global-scale warming and dangerous storm patterns. It is like adding more layers to the blanket. As the emissions of greenhouse gases continues and these gases build up in higher and higher concentrations, ice which has kept water frozen on land, in some cases for tens of thousands of years, is melting and slipping back into the sea, rising sea levels around the world.

  • The nations, cultures, and peoples who have contributed least to the cause of climate change are already suffering most from its impacts and dangers, in the form of monster storms, deadly heat waves, spreading disease, and rising seas. As sea levels rise and people face the great social and environmental justice challenges presented by climate change, we are called to act. The margin for error is small when lives are at risk. And so we must move into these choices armed with the fullest knowledge we can gather from the past. As spaces are lost, we also act to save what we can.

  • Heritage is not only tied to places and objects, but it is carried in stories and memory, shared in culture, and passed between people. Throughout the world, oppressed people’s histories, stories, and cultures have been silenced. It is urgent work to respectfully seek and bring these stories to safe light, restored to living generations, and carried forward into the future. Stories help people relate to one another and to places while preserving key elements of our histories and cultures, connecting us to our ancestors, and helping us navigate through a changing world.

KEY CONCEPTS