Teaching on The Crooked Road  

Classroom Explorations in the Traditional Music of Southwest Virginia

 
“The Crooked Road” is Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail. Teaching on The Crooked Road introduces materials and methods for teachers to incorporate the musical traditions of Southwest Virginia into the K-12 curriculum. The course will examine the region’s history, musical styles, musicians and geographical venues. Instructional techniques will include storytelling, demonstration, audio and visual presentations, and field trips. Teachers and others who take this class will gain insight into bringing traditional music into their teaching through integration with SOLs, along with having the opportunity to develop lesson plans for their classrooms and for sharing. Music instruction is not a core element of this class and knowing how to play music is not required.

 
The class will meet on the third Saturday of the beginning months of 2017 (Jan. 21, Feb. 18, Mar. 18, Apr. 15, & May 20) from 1 – 9 p.m. at Wytheville Community College. There will be a break for dinner around 6 pm and from 7-9 pm the class will attend the WCC Old Time and Bluegrass Jamboree.  There will be one Saturday field trip to the two country music museums in Bristol and the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, VA.  The Mountain Home Center in Bland County is a sponsor of this class and one of the sessions will be held there.

 
Students will have opportunities for both face-to-face, in-class studies and on-line studies through WCC Blackboard resources.  Audio-visual presentations will be combined with lectures, recollections, class discussions and guest musician performances.  The primary project of the class is for the teacher-students to develop lesson plans for use in the classroom which incorporates elements of traditional music into the classroom curriculum. 
Teaching on The Crooked Road is offered as a non-credit class, consisting of 40 hours of in-class time, 40 hours of out-of-class (on-line and project work), and 10 hours of field trip, for a total of 90 hours of contact time. The tuition is $225.   

Instructor David Winship is a retired public school educator from Washington County, Virginia, and a native of Bristol, Tennessee. He served as curator and education director for the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance (BCMA) during its formative years and serves on The Crooked Road’s Education Committee. David developed the Living Legacies program of the BCMA for the Library of Congress Folklife Collection and has worked with the Smithsonian Institution on educational materials related to traditional music.  He has taught the Teaching on The Crooked Road course previously through Virginia Highlands Community College in Abingdon, VA. 

This course is offered through Wytheville Community College – Workforce Development.  For further information, contact Perry Hughes, Director, Workforce Development, at phughes@wcc.vccs.edu or 276.223.4757.