NATCHEZ — Sixth-grade student Logan Suddeth learned a valuable lesson Thursday from the city’s top leader.

“Lead, follow or get out of the way,” Mayor Butch Brown said to a group of middle-school students. “There are the ones that lead, which you can all be, the ones that follow, which are needed to have leaders, or if you don’t want to be either of those, you can get out of the way and let the others do their job.”

Brown was the first of a series of guest speakers who will visit Morgantown Leadership Academy throughout the year to educate students of the various aspects of government, business and community leadership.

The Morgantown Leadership Academy is one of the three new programs being operated for the first time this year at the site of the former Morgantown Middle School.

The school was broken up into different programs to help give students more individualized curriculum options and allow more for more personalized instruction.

The speakers will be paired with projects and in-depth learning experiences as part of an elective course offered at the school through the Jobs for Mississippi Graduates program.

Job specialist Juanita Searcy is leading the class and said the main objective is to prepare the students early on for life after middle and high school.

That happens, Searcy said, by helping students create resumes, participate in mock job interviews and perfect public speaking skills, but also through hearing from other successful leaders in the community.

“We want them to be productive members of society and the community, so the best way we think that can happen is for them to hear directly from the people who have already done that,” Searcy said. “We thought the mayor would be a good person to kick off our speakers because he is the leader of our city and can share what that’s like with the students.”

Brown talked to the students about the difference between a leader and a manager within city government.

“I don’t know, as mayor, how to do the job of the fire, police or other departments, but there are individual managers within those departments to keep those folks going,” Brown said. “A leader is someone who has a vision for where they want to go, but you need followers to go along with the person who has the vision.”

Suddeth said he enjoyed hearing from the mayor that being a follower now didn’t mean he couldn’t be a leader later in life.

“I really like that he said that, because I consider myself a follower now, but I eventually want to be a leader,” Suddeth said. “He helped teach me a lot about leadership.”

Sixth-grader De’Yonna Williams said she had an idea of what it took to be a leader before Thursday, but hearing from Brown helped her understand exactly what it takes.

“I don’t think I’m a leader right now, but I definitely want to be when I grow up,” Williams said. “I think that’s going to take a lot of hard work.”