An unscheduled high school basketball game in August is normally prohibited by athletic association rules governing play in Tallulah and elsewhere, but when the opposition players hail from Washington, D.C., exceptions are made.

Varsity players from Madison Parish High School teamed with teachers, coaches and other students Thursday night in a game of hoops against U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and staffers making their way through eight states on a bus tour called Courage in the Classroom.

The tour is to honor teachers as a new school year begins and talk about the ways educators are tackling problems like underperforming schools and kids, child nutrition and physical activity, teacher recruitment and issues related to early childhood education.

One stop was Tallulah.

“It’s a great opportunity,” said Madison Parish Superintendent Samuel Dixon, whose office was contacted by Duncan’s office to arrange the visit. “We’re very pleased that he decided to stop in Madison Parish, and it gives us a chance to dialogue with the secretary and members of his delegation.”

Dixon passed on playing, but as he met with the secretary and his staff planned to put a bug in Duncan’s ear about the particular challenges of a rural Southern school district. Madison Parish serves about 2,000 students with about 300 employees, including 165 teachers, Dixon said.

“Like so many others, we’re faced with tremendous challenges because of a lack of revenue,” said the superintendent. “We’ve had to reduce some staff, and we have to be creative, inventive and think outside of the box to bring in certified, qualified teachers. We just don’t get the pool of candidates that larger districts have.”

Madison Parish High School is beginning its sixth year, having been formed in the summer of 2005 from the merger of Tallulah and McCall high schools. The district also comprises a middle school, two elementary schools and an alternative school.

Dixon said the game and the notice from the country’s top education official will be a “great morale boost.”

“The goal and the impact of this tour is very simple: we want to highlight America’s educators,” Duncan said when he announced the tour. “We think they are the nation’s unsung heroes. We want to do everything we can to shine the spotlight on the educators that make a huge difference in the lives of our children.”

Duncan began the Courage tour earlier in the day at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., where the “Little Rock Nine” integrated the school in 1957. He held a roundtable discussion with teachers and spoke to a public gathering, before visiting schools in Hamburg, Ark., and Monroe on his way to Tallulah.

Plans called for the secretary to bypass Vicksburg and stop today at the Kids Kollege Freedom School at Jackson State University, where he was to meet with Superintendent of Education Tom Burnham and participate with Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and 10 others in a roundtable discussion, Why I Became a Teacher.

“We consider it a high honor,” said Carolyn Coleman, executive director of Kids Kollege, one of two year-round Freedom Schools in the country that use college student interns to work after school with kids from kindergarten to 12th grade, building civic and community awareness and commitment in youth and nurturing a love for reading that translates into a love for learning, Coleman said.

Duncan also will visit Hattiesburg High School at noon, and the George C. Hall Elementary School in Mobile.

The tour will conclude Monday and Tuesday with visits in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.