Sara Stadem | Editor
Thanks to a former student, West Central History teacher Joanne Bohl’s Civics and Government classes got to have an e-classroom through Zoom with Representative Dusty Johnson on March 31.
“A former student saw that Rep. Johnson was scheduling e-classroom visits to South Dakota High Schools and thought I may be interested,” Bohl said. “I contacted Rep. Johnson’s office and we found a time that would work.”
“The timing was great as we are talking about the three branches of government in both the 9th grade Civics and the 12th grade Government classes,” Bohl said.
Bohl explained Rep. Johnson was in Mitchell at the time of the Zoom call and spoke with one section of 9th grader and one section of 12th graders, each for about 30 minutes.
By doing the visit through Zoom, Bohl was able to videotape Rep. Johnson’s responses and use his visit in her other Civics and Government classes.
According to Bohl, students read Rep. Johnson’s biography from his website and created questions around that. Some of the questions that students asked were:
What was your favorite class in high school?
What is a typical day like for you?
What is the difference between serving in state government and national government?
What does a chief of staff for a state governor do?
What are some of the issues you have worked on with the Agriculture Committee and Education & Labor Committee?
How do you find balance with a busy public life and family life?
Do you have any interest in pursuing other offices in the future?
“I think the students thought it was pretty neat. They had great questions and did a good job participating. Rep. Johnson really connects with his younger constituents, has a wonderful sense of humor, and has a great ease in classroom,” Bohl said. She continued, “He seemed to be enjoying the visit as much as the students and encouraged students to contact him in the future with other questions and concerns. We appreciated Rep. Johnson taking the time to speak in our classroom.”