THOMASVILLE — Author Carole B. Weatherford was in first grade when she spoke her first poem on the way to school.

“My mother pulled the car over and had me repeat it so she could write it down,” Weatherford recalled on a virtual meeting with Harper Elementary School, showing a slide of her handwritten first-grade poem next to a photograph of her 7-year-old self with braids in her hair.

Weatherford, along with her son, illustrator Jeffery Weatherford, spoke to classes via Google Meets at Cross Creek Elementary, Harper Elementary, Jerger Elementary, MacIntyre Park Middle and Thomas County Middle schools in Thomasville and at Southside Elementary School in Cairo.

Weatherford has written more than 50 books, including three Caldecott Honor books. Her most recent, “You Can Fly,” is a mother-son collaboration about the Tuskegee airmen.

Kelli Dorminey, a fourth-grade ELA teacher at Cross Creek Elementary, used Weatherford’s book “Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library” to help her students understand the importance of public libraries.

The class then decided to enhance “Little Free Libraries” located around the city by adding quality, diverse literature for all ages.

At Southside Elementary School, Media Specialist Stephanie White used two of Weatherford’s books “Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom” and “Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights,” to have her students compare and contrast Hamer and Tubman. The students shared PowerPoint presentations they created with the award-winning author and illustrator.

“Visiting with the Weatherfords had a profound impact on students. Reading about the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen opened their eyes to an important part of American history and to the opportunity to interact with and ask questions of the author and illustrator further cemented the importance of the Tuskegee Airmen in both black history and American history,” said Clark Ramey, an MPMS English-language arts teacher.

Thomasville Center for the Arts, with support from the Thomas Caldecott Chubb Literary Fund, hosted the visit to support classroom teachers in creating arts-integrated learning units.

“We usually have almost 11,000 students from across the region visit the Center to enjoy live theater productions. But with the pandemic, we are focusing on more intimate and in-depth experiences with artists. Some of these can be done in-person, but some have elected to go online,” said Mary Oglesby, Art with Schools Director at Thomasville Center for the Arts.

“We know it’s important to provide students with tools to express themselves, and we want to continue to support professional artists any way we can.”