The verdict is in, “The Color Blue” is the best color in the world, according to two Head Start classes that visited Putnam County’s historic courthouse early this month.
Clerk of Superior Court of Putnam County Trevor Addison and his team hosted two classes in celebration of Georgia’s pre-k Week, which offers the opportunity for leaders around the state to visit with pre-k students in their local communities.
“The State Department of Education encourages the government-funded Head Start programs to get out there and meet their elected officials and kind of get an introduction to government and to court,” Addison said. “And it’s an opportunity for the people who are elected, like me, to meet the kids. We can either go into the classroom and see how it’s run, or the kids can visit us on a field trip and kind of see our offices and where we work.”
Initially, Addison said he was approached by the Head Start program with a request to simply visit his office, but he countered that a group of young kids would just be bored.
“I mean, I’ve got a bunch of historic books and things like that, but I wanted something to kind of grab their attention and something they could actually take part in. I wanted it to be something that they could get involved in, where everyone had a role and they weren’t just walking in a straight line through the courthouse,” he said. “Now, if I had older kids I may pivot and do something different, but we really tried to make it kind of fun and beneficial for them. They got an idea of how the court runs and got to participate in the process. So that’s what we tried to do.”
In the downtown Eatonton courtroom, two students from each class were selected to serve as judges for the day, and two more were named court clerks. Addison further explained that students whose favorite colors are blue and yellow were then placed at separate counsel tables, where they served as attorneys for the day, and all remaining students were placed in the jury box as jurors for the day.
The yellow and blue attorneys then took turns explaining why their color was superior, both judges presided over the courtroom, issued their orders, and adjourned court by slamming the gavel. The jurors voted on which side presented the best case and the clerks of the day each read the verdict and filed the verdict forms.
In the end, both classes returned the same verdict: “The color blue is the best color in the world!”
“I’d be glad to host primary, elementary, middle, and high school kids. We could make everything more complicated as the students got older,” Addison said. “For example, we could actually strike a jury, send them to the jury room, and make them deliberate just like a normal jury would rather than just taking a vote.”
Addison said he’s open to working with the county board of education and perhaps individual school principals if any are interested in offering their students the chance of a similar glimpse into legal workings at a high level.