Lindsay+Cumbea+-+1968

1968

Dear Diary, Last night was the ACC Basketball Championship and my Wolfpack lost to UNC. I'm really upset about it, but all my friends tell me I shouldn't be because I should've known we'd lose. I don't think that's fair though, you should always support your team, even the odds aren't real good. My parents won't stop playing that songs of that Beatles album that won a grammy this year. I like them and all, but it's getting annoying. Rock music is okay, but it's not my favorite. I'm glad it's the weekend though, even though basketball season is over. I can't wait til I can go to NC State and play basketball.

April 5, 1989 Dear Diary, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated yesterday! I didn't really know what that word meant but mom explained it to me. It's when someone is killed, but I thought that was what murder was. I don't know if there's a difference. No one knows who did it, which is really sad. He was in Tennessee, which is really far from here. Lots of people are really upset about it. He seemed like a cool man. He wanted to help people, which is cool and all. I guess not everyone liked him though, for someone to want him dead and all. Dad is worried it's going to make a lot of people angry, and that it could make America kind of unsafe. I don't know what that means, shouldn't anyone dying like that make people angry? I hope they find who did it.

May 23, 1989 A movie I'm dying to see comes out tomorrow, I hope dad will take me to see it. An Indiana Jones movie! I hope it's as good as the last two. Mom thinks seeing all that adventure is bad for me but I know Dad loves them too, so hopefully she'll let me go with him.

June 4, 1989 Mom did finally let me see the new Indiana Jones movie, but in return I had to agree to go see the Dead Poets Society with her, because it's more educational. I kind of liked it, but I don't really see what the big deal is.

August 23, 1989 I saw the first episode of a really great show this week! Saved by the Bell. I'm excited to see the next one, I hope it's just as good. I don't always watch the Disney Channel but I really like this one. I also really like a song by Bobby Brown right now, My Prerogative. It's so catchy and I sing it all the time. I think Mom and Dad are annoyed, but it's so much better than the Beatles.

Pedagogy To scaffold this process for students in middle school, I'd be sure to maybe use it following a book that was written around the time period, or provide them with a lot of documents and resources before hand to make sure that they had a good grasp on what was going on in society as well as just the big events and people. Having them know about the kind of music that was popular and what sort of things were in their news and magazines other than world events (fashion, music, entertainment) would allow them to have a more holistic approach. They could be allowed to do their own research about their year, but make all of them relatively close together (1960s-80s for example) so maybe they could string all of the students narratives together to see the subtle changes over time. Depending on the time period, they could conduct interviews with parents and relatives outside of class to see about their memories of the time period as well, which would be a fun way for students to really connect another time period to their own.