Teaching students the structure of the nation’s government, teacher Sewall Janeway said he tries to make class special every year by finding a way to make textbook material come alive.

That is why he contacted U.S. Sen. Angus King’s office in September.

King “came to” Mt. Ararat High School on Nov. 7 with a virtual appearance via Skype — the online video-conferencing service.

Recently, seniors in both Advanced Placement government classes gathered in the high school’s Learning Commons — formerly the library, now transformed into a place that now combines the library and technology experience — to pepper King with questions about governance.

King answered, the conversation was recorded on both ends, and the exchange is now posted on YouTube where the two video streams play side-by-side.

It is a program King does called “Capitol Class.” Thus far, Janeway said, Mt. Ararat is one of only a few schools to participate.

Students asked King several questions, ranging from the difference between the jobs of governor and senator; the challenges and opportunities he’s faced as an independent in a partisan Congress; how many bills he’s sponsored and that process; how he was appointed to committees — Armed Services, Budget, Rules and Intelligence; and to weigh in on the direction of the Affordable Care Act and campaign finance.

The class has studied Congress and the presidency and just studied the Supreme Court.

“I’m really happy we’re talking about current events, just because it opens my eyes to what’s going on — the different parties, too,” Leon said. “And it’s kind of nice to talk about the governmental structure as well.”

Jonah Levy of Harpswell planned to ask King about his committee work, which King answered in his introduction, so Levy asked King what work he had been doing on the Intelligence Committee.

“It’s only his first year and he’s already got such a diverse set of issues he’s dealing with,” Levy said.

Ellison Etnier of Harpswell said he was surprised to hear King hasn’t been approached by many lobbyists, “and I was expecting a lot of people to be approaching him, especially as an independent who could potentially be swayed from one side to the other.”

Levy added that one would think that, as a newcomer to the Senate, lobbyists would want to influence him early on.

Connie Hodge of Topsham asked King if he would run again for the Senate, and his response — that it is too early to be able to answer that — surprised Leon.

Hodge added that “I feel like that’s always on their minds,” and as a politician he would always be working to garner the favor of his constituency.

“He said it was like asking us if we knew what we were going to do after college,” Leon said.

“I was very impressed with how quick on his feet he was,” Janeway said. “He didn’t say ‘uh’ or ‘um’ and he felt very loose and comfortable and interested.”

“He used a lot of vocabulary terms from our book, which is neat to have that brought to life,” Leon said — terms like “oversight” and “conference committee.”

“That’s one of the things about government. Some of what you learn in a textbook, I hate to say it, it’s a little bit dry. But having (King) talk about it definitely made it more interesting because you see how it actually works,” Etnier said.

Hodge said she almost didn’t take the class but she is glad she did, “because I’m going to be 18 soon and so I’ll get to vote so knowing all this stuff is going to make it a lot easier to decide which kind of things I want to vote for and understand what they’re about on the ballot because there are a lot of complicated things.”

Every year Janeway has a different group, sometimes highly charged, partisan groups he can barely keep from yelling at each other about issues.

But this year’s class is focused on process versus arguing policy, he said, which is what the curriculum is about.

While it’s an off-election year, there’s always something big going on; most recently the government shutdown and the Affordable Care Act debate and “every year there seems to be something we can latch onto and make the stuff that’s in our textbook real,” Janeway said. “It doesn’t fail.”