Legislators visit Natchez-Adams School District, get pop quizzes
Published 12:00 am Thursday, September 30, 2004
Sixth-graders have never been known to make things easy on adults. So when Sen. Bob Dearing asked a social studies class at Morgantown Elementary if there were any questions, he should have been prepared for the tables to turn.
It didn’t take long for hands to shoot up and questions to come out.
If Dearing had been graded on the social studies quiz the students gave him he would have scored a 50.
The first question, &uot;Do you know what a tributary is,&uot; was nothing Dearing couldn’t handle.
He answered the question about river branches with two examples in Adams County, St. Catherine’s Creek and the Homochitto River.
Archipelago was the one that got him.
The senator was quick to admit that he had no idea what an archipelago (a group or chain of islands) is, and he quickly turned it into a life lesson saying you are never to old to learn.
Sharing knowledge was one of the intents of Thursday’s back to school day for area legislators.
Dearing, along with Reps. Robert Johnson, Sam Mims and Kelvin Butler, walked away from Natchez-Adams County Schools Thursday after directly hearing the needs from Superintendent Anthony Morris and perhaps witnessing them in the classrooms.
Each legislator visited two classrooms at one of the schools. Johnson went to Natchez High, Mims to McLaurin Elementary and Butler to Robert Lewis Middle School.
Dearing caught more of a break in Judy Redd’s third-grade class. There he played mental math games with the students, challenging them to add and subtract several numbers in their heads and talked about their future.
In a class with students who said they wanted to be a nurse, lawyer, police officer and animal control officer, Dearing told students the place to start was in that very classroom.
&uot;It’s never too early to think about what you want to be,&uot; he said.
&uot;You have to start planning, start thinking and start doing,&uot; he added.
&uot;Listen to your teachers. Do what you’ve been taught because you are getting a good education. There’s no better elementary school than Morgantown Elementary.&uot;
Dearing, who was a teacher and administrator in Natchez for nine years, got a little more complex with the sixth-graders, once they stopped quizzing him.
He walked them through the process of making a bill a law by using an example of a bill he authored.
He also told them about the bill he authored more than 10 years ago that requires them to stay in school until age 17 and what it will take to get into college.
&uot;College is for all of us,&uot; Dearing said.
&uot;All of them (colleges) would take you tomorrow as far as being a student, but you’ve got to have the grades. You have to have a C average if you want to go to college.&uot;