Focus on TUSD - April 2007

Jefferson Stops in at Bonillas Elementary
Students and staff at Bonillas Elementary School took a step back in time when Thomas Jefferson recently stopped in for a visit.

School children spent only 10 minutes with the third U.S. President because of a modern-day glitch--a flight delay. But after Jefferson dealt with that jolt into the 21st century, he transported them back to the Colonial world he lived in more than two centuries ago.

In full Colonial garb, Jefferson doffed his tri-cornered hat when he arrived, shaking hands with students sitting up front on the gym floor. Shaking hands, he told them, was a new practice in America, intended to show that the people shaking hands did not carry a weapon.

He told them he rides his horse 35 to 40 miles a day at only 5-miles-per-hour to prevent tiring the horse. Horses are expensive to maintain, he admitted, but they carry travelers faster than walking would. Walkers generally could cover only 3-miles-per-hour, making the average of a horse and a human's travel speed 4-miles-per- hour. "I live in a 4-mile-an-hour world," Jefferson said. "That's all I know."

Jefferson stopped a moment to wind his timepiece with a key and correct the time. He showed students the seal dangling from his watch before he replaced it in his pocket. The seal, he said, was indispensable because he used it every time he wrote the many letters he was famous for. His unbroken seal, carrying the letters "TJ," on a letter assured the receiver that the letter had not been opened.

As for one of his most well-known accomplishments, penning the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson said he spent four days writing it on three pages of paper. "I couldn't read what I wrote because there were so many changes and I transcribed it," he said. He preferred to call the document the "Declaration of American Independence," and said that when he signed it, it was like signing his death warrant. If Americans had lost their battle with the English, all 66 men whose names appeared on the document would have been captured and executed as criminals, he said.

When a student showed Jefferson a $2 bill imprinted with Jefferson's image, Jefferson professed amazement at the reproduction and then promptly identified the four other Revolutionary figures with him on the bill: Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, John Adams, Roger Sherman and R.L. Livingston.

Students who queried him on his job as the president were told that it was a lonely job, hard work, and that it led to losing friends. "I didn't become president because I wanted to," he said. "I became president because people wanted me to be president." He called the presidency a "splendid misery."

After the session, students mobbed him as if he were a rock star, clamoring for autographs and posing for pictures with him.

Jefferson also met with teachers after classes ended. As an announcement from a female staff member came over the intercom, a startled Jefferson said, "There you are. The Creator is a woman."

Jefferson turned to more serious topics in that session, telling his audience that he worked to abolish slavery during his career, beginning with his first speech before the House of Burgesses when he was 26 years old. Though Jefferson owned 250 slaves, his contemporaries viewed him as a turncoat because of his slavery stance, he said.

Jefferson ruefully said that his attempt to set up a universal system of public education resulted only in the establishment of the University of Virginia. He believed that if Americans educated the enlightened, they would spread the concept of a free, public education.

He admitted to fathering a child with his 16-year-old slave, Sally Hemmings, in answer to an audience question, but was disturbed that he would be asked about such a personal matter. "People remarked over the years that the boy bore a remarkable resemblance to me," he said with a grin.

Addressing faculty at Bonillas

Bill Barker plays Thomas Jefferson so convincingly that his audiences swear they're seeing and hearing the president. Barker, who is the same height and weight as Jefferson and has the same coloring, and has been playing the founding father for 14 years at Colonial Williamsburg, stopped to visit Bonillas Elementary School recently.

Three Bonillas teachers have been selected to attend this year's Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute, an intense seven-day immersion into early American history. A total of nine Tucson teachers will participate this year.

Barker joins other actors at Williamsburg who portray Patrick Henry, George and Martha Washington, an African American preacher and slave interpreters.

Barker started his Jefferson impersonation after a career as a professional actor and director. He started his stint on the 250th birthday of Jefferson in 1993.

At Williamsburg, Barker said the staff works hard to weave primary documents and eyewitness accounts of Jefferson into the presentations and to stay in the period. "We are not politically correct," he said. "We stay away from presentism."

At the institute, teachers will visit Jamestown, where docents, park rangers and interpreters at Historic Jamestowne and Jamestown Settlement will guide them through the lifestyle of the English people who arrived on the shores of Virginia in May of 1607.

Noemi Armstrong, the Bonillas instructional coach who attended a previous Teacher Institute, said her experience was "absolutely beyond fabulous. It was truly the most rewarding professional development I've ever had in 34 years. It was such a great opportunity to be there and be totally absorbed in history. I felt like I was actually there and lived there. We were completely surrounded by the environment and we left there with enthusiasm and ideas of ways to share this with my class and colleagues."

Going from Bonillas to the institute this year will be fifth-grade teachers Michael Philips and Jeff Uhrig and third-grade teacher Jim Pankrazt. Private supporters are paying for the nine teachers' visit this summer, which costs $1,900 per student for tuition, meals and lodging.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, established in 1926, is a nonprofit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century Revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the stories of American's founding men and women.

Bill Barker as Jefferson with Mary Ann Wilson from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Bonillas Principal Richard Romero

-- By Sharon Dunham
Communications & Media Relations

TUSD - Proud Supporter of Small Classes

All photos in the April issue by Jes Ruvalcaba of Communications & Media Relations.

The deadline to submit material for the May Focus is Friday, May 4. The Focus will be published Friday, May 18. Email submissions to Chyrl Hill Lander or Sharon Dunham in the Communications & Media Relations Department or use the Focus Online Submission Form.