Dogtag Summer - Rosado Group - Jessica Gonzalez, Gianna Stefanelli & Vanessa Nascimento
Posted by Unknown at 4:39 PM
Author: Elizabeth Partridge
Illustrator: N/A
Year: 2011
Recommended for: Young adults, grades 6 - 8
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Social Studies Resource 1
When you click on this website, go to the bottom and click on "Why did American get involved in Vietnam" on the left hand side. This will then download and allow you to open in Microsoft Word. When teaching the Vietnam War, teachers can provide their children with this worksheet. It talks about the background of the Vietnam War which is essential for students to understand. This includes a paragraph students can read and then questions to answer afterwards. This type of worksheet can allow students to use their comprehension skills, apply what they read, and use their critical thinking skills.
Social Studies Resource 2
When you click on this website, you can scroll down to the third page and find this interview that student can conduct. They can use this interview to find out how people during this time felt about the war and how it affected them.
Arts Resource 1
This is a great resource teachers can use when teaching the Vietnam war. A teacher can integrate art into this by introducing an artifact. This website provides a lot of great pictures of artifacts from the Vietnam War. If you click on an artifact, it then leads you to the description of it. Instead of showing this exact website to students, teachers can choose the specific artifacts they want to show to their class and paste their specific description underneath. Teachers can put this on a Microsoft Word document, Power Point slides or print them out and put them on bulletin boards. Artifacts from the Vietnam War contain a lot of information and will allow students to come into visual contact with history. It will also be a great way for students to understand and remember the sacrifices of those who were involved.
Arts Resource 2
This website can be utilized to introduce artists who drew paintings symbolizing the Vietnam War. Next to each painting there is a description that explains what the painting represents. By viewing these, children will have a better understanding of the war and the effects it had on the specific artists.
Here you will find The National Vietnam War Museum which is located in Texas. Showing this website to students allows them to understand just how important this war was and that there is a museum specifically dedicated to the war itself. Teachers can explore this website with their students but primarily focus on the "museum exhibits" section. The teacher can click on each section of the museum (which is numbered) and show the students that each gallery in the museum represents something different. For example, if you click on "1" you will see that this gallery focuses on the cultural and social aspects of the Vietnam era. The picture on the right hand side, which can be enlarged, gives a rough sketch of what the actual gallery in the museum looks like.
Important Characters
Tracy, Stargazer, Tracy's parents - Bob and Donna
Tracy, Stargazer, Tracy's parents - Bob and Donna
Tracy
Tracy is the protagonist in “Dogtag Summer.” She is an adolescent who is just finishing up her last day of school. Tracy is transitioning from elementary school into middle school, and the summer of 1980 has proven to be one of the biggest moments in her life! Tracy has always struggled with her identity as she never felt whole or complete as a person. She is unsure of herself and feels displaced as a result of being from a multi-cultural background. Despite her feelings of emptiness, Tracy is an obedient, respectful and extremely strong individual. Her upbringing in Vietnam has shaped Tracy to be quite independent; however, it is also the place which has formed a “hollowed-out place” in her belly. Feelings of loneliness and abandonment have also contributed to Tracy’s introversion. At times Tracy longs for a big family, she does not have any siblings, and only has one best friend. She spends a lot of time alone allowing her to miss her “Má” and her grandmother back in Vietnam. Tracy’s driving force in life is to begin to mend the hole she bears in her stomach from a life she used to have in Vietnam and her current life in America. She is desperate to find a bridge between these two worlds of hers that will bring her feelings of happiness, fulfillment and an overall sense of wholeness.
Stargazer
Stargazer is Tracy’s best friend. In contrast to Tracy’s small family, Stargazer comes from a big family. He lives with his mom, Ruthie; his father, Beldon; his little sister, Summer; and his two dogs, Jip and Pixie. He is a happy-go-lucky twelve year old who enjoys swimming in the river with his best friend, Tracy. Stargazer also enjoys ideas about war, heroes, and guns, and he spends his summer with Tracy building a funeral Viking ship. Stargazer’s confidence comes from a loving and carefree environment at home despite living in a cramped trailer. His parents are “hippies,” a sure sign of the times during the 1960’s and 70’s. Growing up in a free-spirited world, Stargazer was immune to what other kids thought. He is a “normal” boy who is enjoying his summer break with his best friend.
Stargazer is Tracy’s best friend. In contrast to Tracy’s small family, Stargazer comes from a big family. He lives with his mom, Ruthie; his father, Beldon; his little sister, Summer; and his two dogs, Jip and Pixie. He is a happy-go-lucky twelve year old who enjoys swimming in the river with his best friend, Tracy. Stargazer also enjoys ideas about war, heroes, and guns, and he spends his summer with Tracy building a funeral Viking ship. Stargazer’s confidence comes from a loving and carefree environment at home despite living in a cramped trailer. His parents are “hippies,” a sure sign of the times during the 1960’s and 70’s. Growing up in a free-spirited world, Stargazer was immune to what other kids thought. He is a “normal” boy who is enjoying his summer break with his best friend.
Tracy's parents, Bob and Donna
Bob and Donna are good-hearted parents, mild-tempered, and easygoing people. They lead a simple life in their house in Santa Rosa, California. Bob and Donna met when they were young and wed right before Bob left to serve the United States in the Vietnam War. As a couple, prior to the war, they were very happy with each other. After Bob came back from the war, however, he became different and was extremely distant. Bob suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and as a result it has caused a big strain in the marriage. Bob works in a hardware store/lumbar jack yard called Jones Brothers and Donna works as a cashier in a local supermarket called Redwood Cove Market. They are a hardworking, middle-class family whose daily routines and family secrets have made them to appear and feel tired. As a family, they do not spend a lot of time together except for their quiet and somber dinners. Bob and Donna adopted Tracy at the age of six and are trying their best to raise her as normal as possible given her difficult upbringing in Vietnam. Bob and Donna are full of love. Unfortunately, they just become lost as individuals and as a family as their past continued to haunt them.
Summary of Historical Content
The Vietnam War occurred in Vietnam, Southeast Asia from November 1955-April 1975. It was a long, bloody and costly armed conflict. It followed the first Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam (supported by communist allies) and the government of South Vietnam (supported by U.S. and other ant-communicated countries).Vietnam was split into two parts. North Vietnam was communist-ruled and South Vietnam was not ruled by communist. This was a prolonged struggle between nationalist forces who wanted to unify the country under a communist government and the United States, with the aid of the South Vietnamese, attempting to prevent the spread of communism. North Vietnam wanted to end U.S. support of South Vietnam and unite the north and south into a single nation. The United States and the South Vietnamese army tried to stop them. From 1957 to 1965, the war was primarily a struggle between the South Vietnamese army and Communist-trained South Vietnamese known as the Viet Cong. Viet Cong was a political organization and an army in South Vietnam. The first U.S. troops entered Vietnam in March 1965. Until 1969, North Vietnam and the United States did most of the fighting. Military groups rose from 16,000 to 21,000. By 1969, the Vietnam War seemed endless, and the United States slowly began to withdraw troops. In January 1973, a cease fire was arranged. The last U.S. ground troops left Vietnam two months later. Despite the treaty, fighting between North and South Vietnam continued soon afterward, but U.S. troops did not return. In 1975, the war came to an end after North Vietnam captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. The lives taken by this war is believed to be as high as four million. Today, April 30th is a public holiday in Vietnam known as Reunification Day.
"Dogtag Summer" is a novel in which the main character’s most prevalent conflict is remembering where she came from. Throughout the whole book Tracy has flashbacks of the time she lived in Vietnam and the hardships of her childhood there. She learns about her difficult childhood in Vietnam through her adoptive parents. With each new detail she was given, she remembered something new that occurred in her childhood. By the end of the book, after pushing her adoptive father to tell her everything he knew, she found out who her biological parents were. After finding out about her childhood she was finally able to accept herself for who she is, even is she is different than everyone else.
NJ Core Curriculum Standards and Activity
Social Studies
6.1.P.D.3 Express individuality and cultural diversity.
6.1.P.D.4 Learn about and respect other cultures within the classroom and community.
Art
1.1.8.D.2 Compare and contrast various masterworks of art from diverse cultures, and identify elements of the works that relate to specific cultural heritages.
Activity
These three standards can be easily combined into one activity because they are so similar. In this activity, students will have to talk to their family to find out about their culture and background. They will bring in a work of art that represents where their family came from. The student will then share the information they learned about their culture and the piece of art that represents it. The students will learn about different cultures and how they compare to their own culture.
This historical fiction novel portrays the Vietnam War in a very realistic fashion. The author did a lot of reading and she also interviewed people in America and Vietnam who had lived through the war in order to depict how the war impacted both American and Vietnamese cultures. This book and its historical event allows adolescents and young readers to understand how ordinary people's lives changed as a direct result of the Vietnam War. The novel illustrates the big division that existed in North and South Vietnam during these times of disorder, and it provides great insight into how the United States felt about the possible spread of communism that threatened to spread across the world. In addition, young people have a wonderful opportunity to learn about others who come from a multi-cultural background, such as Tracy whose blood father was an American GI and whose blood mother worked in a laundry facility within the American base in Vietnam. "Dogtag Summer" and the historical event in it provides a forum wherein a teacher can discuss many of the social issues that impacted war vets as well as their families. For example, one issue that can be explored is how Americans in the Unites States greeted war heroes once they finally came back home. Another topic of discussion may encompass how isolated these soldiers felt and how post-traumatic stress disorder is created through acts of war and how society is affected as a whole. Finally, students can also learn the significance of dogtags and the special meaning represented by them. Young people can learn about the emotions behind keeping such mementos in order to maintain connections and in order to remember, grieve, and above all honor!
History. (1996-2012). http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war
Lamb, A., & Johnson, L. (April, 4). Vietnam war. http://www.42explore2.com/vietnam.htm
NJCCS – Social Studies Curriculum Content Standards http://www.nj.gov/education/cccs/standards/6/
Rosenburg, J. (2012). Vietnam war. http://history1900s.about.com/od/vietnamwar/a/vietnamwar.htm
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