Roots with Wings, a Floyd County Place-Based Education Project:: Intergenerational Connections

Floyd Story Center

Since 1998, a community oral history collection partnership of the Old Church Gallery, Ltd., Radford University’s Center for Social and Cultural Research, Honors Program, Scholar-Citizen Initiative, Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center, and Floyd County High School. Our archives now hold over 100 interviews.

In our Roots with Wings project, college mentors, high school staff, and community volunteers meet weekly during the school year to teach the discipline of oral history collection.


Students learn ethical, methodologically sound interview techniques, practice and complete several interviews, transcribe the audiotapes, create searchable content logs, archive interviewee resources and period photographs, learn the technology of audio and video recording, research historical backgrounds, acquire proficiency in iMovie and storytelling, and finally extract a theme from an hour long interview to create a seven minute movie production.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

SEMESTER'S END

Winding Up
Roots with Wings Team Members from
 the Floyd Story Center at the Old Church Gallery,
Floyd County Public Schools,
and Radford University
Melinda Wagner, Amanda Burroughs, Catherine Pauley,
Alice Slusher, Molly Cox, Vicky McAlexander, Kimberly Ingram
Shaylee Hodges, Sharmaine Ramirez, Cora Bland

The past few months have been extraordinary for us.  As a finale, on April 23 we four Radford University students were able to show off the Roots with Wings Project at the Student Engagement Forum.  We created a PowerPoint presentation of pictures from the Project and spoke about our experiences in Floyd County.  As we rehearsed the presentation, we realized that we became the most animated when we spoke about our wonderful interviewees.  All four of us were hosted by kind and gracious people from the community.  The Department of Sociology honored us with the Outstanding Research in Service to the Community Award for 2019.  With our Floyd County Public School teacher partners, we have created transcriptions, photographs, and interview summaries that will be archived at the Floyd Story Center at the Old Church Gallery.  We are proud to have been part of the Roots with Wings team.  Some of us might just have to become Floyd Story Center volunteers now!  Thank you for letting us be a part of this community.
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