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Managing Editor Scott Wright has been with The Post
since 1998. He is Speaking to honors class was truly an honor By Scott Wright Last week I had the honor of being asked by Tim Gossett to speak to the honors, or gifted, class he teaches at the Cherokee County Career and Technology Center. I quickly accepted, and after a frantic Monday night scrambling for some type of positive, instructive message relating to the topic he suggested, I spoke to the entire group of about 50 kids ages 8-12.Mr. Gossett's students come to the CCCTC every week from all across the county to take advantage of the unique opportunity he offers them to spend time learning in an atmosphere unhindered by the constraints of other students who aren't quite as well-endowed, academically. (Those are my words, not his.) In addition to instructing individual grades one at a time in his classroom throughout the school year, Mr. Gossett also hosts the class Christmas party in the “Meeting Room” on the CCCTC campus. He conducted this year's annual get-together last Tuesday, and asked me, along with several other local officials and citizens, to join the festivities. The “Meeting Room” is larger than a standard classroom and features electronic projection screens and rows of chairs for the students, all of which face the stage area where Mr. Gossett encourages group discussion and advanced learning in a laid-back, yet extremely well-disciplined setting. I was very impressed with the facilities and all of the students in the room. They're normal kids, at least at a glance: They run and play and tickle and giggle and snack and spill -- but they seem to do it intelligently, somehow. It's hard to explain, but I promise you'd know what I was talking about if you saw it for yourself. As I mentioned, Mr. Gossett suggested a topic for me to discuss, and that was the book about the history of Weiss Lake I recently completed. It is (shameless plug alert) currently on sale at Model Tees Screen Printing and several other locations around Cherokee County and makes a spectacular Christmas gift. But I didn't want to give the students in the gifted class my standard spiel, which in the previous two or three occasions I have had to talk in a public setting consisted of reading a few pages from the book and then hoping for a few questions from those gathered to hear me blather on. So I talked about Weiss Lake -- about the construction project itself, and the people who lost their farms, and the ferries, and the Indian burial mounds, and the roads and bridges, and a few other topics I can't even remember because I go into sort of a trance when I speak in public and the next thing I know it's over and I'm standing there hoping I didn't mispronounce my own last name or let an expletive slip out. (Since after I finished Mr. Gossett was not staring silently at me, I am assuming I didn't unfurl any four-letter words, but you'd have to ask him to be certain because I barely remember a thing.) Anyway, according to the notes I made beforehand, I also told the students about all the time I spent sitting and listening to the people I interviewed for the book -- people like my dad and my dad's cousin Kenny Gossett and Ralph Meade and Coach Johnson and Gary Mobbs and Forrest Pearson, and a couple dozen others. I learned so much about the history of Cherokee County from these people, and I hope and pray that I performed a halfway decent job of forwarding at least a tidbit or two along to the people who read “A History of Weiss Lake” and to the young minds who sat attentively and listened to me for 30 minutes last week. What pleased me most about my time with Mr. Gossett's class was how eager the students were to learn more. In my previous experiences, 20 or 30 minutes of me prattling on was enough to completely silence the crowd. (Perhaps I had uttered an expletive?) But when I finished speaking last week, over half the kids in the room raised their hands to ask questions. They were intelligent, well-thought-out questions, and I must have fielded a dozen or more before it was time for the next event on the day's schedule. If you're the parent of grandparent of one of those gifted students, you're more fortunate than you can possibly know. Your son or daughter is intelligent, curious and eager to learn. That made that clear to me very quickly. As I was wrapping up, and coming out of my speech-induced trance, I remember telling them to take a few minutes this holiday season to find out what their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents remember about Weiss Lake. I told them to ask if they remember the construction, or the early years, or even what Cherokee County looked like before there was a Weiss Lake smack in the middle of it. So if you're one of the wise old souls and a young, curious relative plops down in your lap after Christmas dinner and asks an off-the-wall question about Weiss Lake or some aspect of its creation, please respond because I encouraged them to ask. I can just about guarantee you they'll listen attentively to the answer. |