Students will learn about history and music history through listening, analyzing, and performing works in their instrumental class. Students will gain insight into history through a Fine Arts lens, enabling them to make connections with contemporaries and world events. 

Virginia Roots is a video series for middle and high school music that focuses on the role of Appalachian Music and is designed to help teachers incorporate traditional music and art forms into the curriculum.

Episode 5: The jam session is at the heart of old time music in Appalachia. In this episode we travel to Floyd, Virginia to the Handmade Music School's Old Time Get Together, an event that brings over a hundred musicians together each year to learn tunes "knee to knee". We also visited the Floyd Country Store, which has been hosting old time music for generations to learn how anyone can learn the basics so that they can join a jam session themselves, and the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum in Ferrum, VA, which also hosts a weekly jam..

Episode 3: In this video, Dr. Rene' Rogers, chief curator of the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, VA/TN shares the importance of the 1927 Bristol Sessions, which resulted in the launch of prominent Appalachian musicians like the Carter Family and Jimmy Rogers, as well as producer Ralph Peer, among others. The evolution of recording equipment and techniques is tied to Bristol's central location for musical talent and traditions.