Bill Newsome
Enthusiastic educator and academic team coach with a passion for furthering academic competition!
Bill Newsome
Enthusiastic educator and academic team coach with a passion for furthering academic competition!
Bill Newsome
Welcome!
Thank you for visiting my professional portfolio website! Explore my site to learn more about me, my background, my teaching philosophy, and my passion for academic competition. If you have questions or would like to discuss an opportunity to work together, please get in touch.
Teaching Philosophy
Essentialist and Perennialist Educator
As an educator, I recognize the value of career and technical education: In these educational models, students are provided hands-on skills training and experience that will serve them well in the workforce. While the benefits of vocational education are worthwhile and valid, especially to today's employers, I sincerely believe that an educational model based on cultural literacy, content mastery, and critical thinking skills is equally--if not more--worthwhile. In the classroom, my educational practices are informed by an essentialist approach that values leading students through progressively difficult content and a perennialist philosophy that teaches students to think rationally by appreciating and mastering the great works of human thought and culture that have "stood the test of time." I find it absolutely tragic that so many schools are moving to a practical, skills-based model which some educators feel students will actually use "in the real world"; these models typically fail to consider the manifold benefits of more traditional content-based approaches to education. I contend that by studying the great ideas, events, and works of world history and literature, students will become culturally literate and better able to connect real-world events, including those in their own lives, to the timeless ideas and ideals of humanity's past. Thus, studying the great problems and solutions of humanity's past will help, not hinder, students in solving real-world problems from any time period. And it may just help them become Jeopardy! champions to boot!
The philosophies of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and Mortimer Adler are two of the biggest influences on my teaching. Click the links below to read some of their influential ideas.
- To read E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s article "You Can Always Look It Up -- Or Can You?" click here
- To read selections from Mortimer Adler's Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind click here
Click the links below to view samples of my classroom activities.
- Click here to view an interactive PearDeck activity introducing AP students to Greek theatre and Oedipus Rex (Note: While students will log into the PearDeck website and type their responses directly on the website, this link directs to the Google Slides version to prevent the need to sign in to PearDeck)
- Click here to view interactive graphic organizers for Act II of Macbeth used in my AP and Honors English classes
- Click here to view active reading questions for Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Academic Competition
My Journey with Academic Competition
As a Competitor
From my middle school years to the present day, academic competition has been a formative element of my life. Before I joined the academic team at the suggestion of my middle school language arts teacher, I wasn't the best student: I was intellectually curious and loved learning, but I didn't always do my homework or pay as much attention as I should in my classes. Once I attended my first academic team practice in middle school, I was hooked, and I became a much better student as a result. Academic competition afforded me exposure to a whole world of famous battles, science experiments, literary characters, great works of music, and masterpieces of art that I would likely never have discovered otherwise.
I continued with academic competition in high school, eventually helping my team to take third place in the 2001 Governor's Cup State quick recall competition and bringing home the gold with my first place finish on the Language Arts exam that same year. It was in high school while studying for the academic team that I decided I would become a teacher. I was reading Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology when I was struck by the beauty of the poetic language and the imagery it evoked; I wanted to lead others to love great literature as much as I had come to love it, and what better way to accomplish that goal than to become a teacher--and an academic team coach as well...
My passion for academic competition not sated in the least, I played quick recall and quizbowl while attending college as well, becoming team captain. During this time, I also served as assistant quick recall coach and Language Arts and Arts and Humanities subject-area coach at Pikeville High School, helping them to multiple All A Classic State Tournament titles and Governor's Cup quick recall state titles in 2003 and 2005.
As a Coach
In service to my goal of instilling a love of learning in students, I have served as either assistant or head academic team coach at every school where I taught: Pikeville High School, Beaumont Middle School, Danville-Bate Middle School, and Grayson County High School. My years serving as a coach have helped to keep alive my passion for academic competition, keep my mind sharp, and keep me devoted to helping young minds on their journey toward knowledge. There is no greater reward than seeing students who push themselves in long hours of practice and study in pursuit of academic excellence begin to reap the rewards by excelling in their competitions and, consequently, their classes at school.
As an Instructor and Director
Something I find equally as rewarding as competing and coaching my own students in academic competitions is helping to advance the activity by serving as an instructor and director for academic team summer camps. I look forward to academic camps all year long and give up most of my summer to staff KAAC's Governor's Cup camps and Qwiz's quizbowl summer camps. Weeks of informative classes and intense buzzer competition leave me tired, but I keep returning each new summer because I find it so rewarding to help students reach their academic goals. Academic camps are just the battery recharge I need to keep me powered up and ready to hit the new school year--and academic competition season--head on!
As a Board Member
I have helped to further advance academic competition in Kentucky by serving on the Board of Directors of both KAAC and KQBA (the Kentucky Quizbowl Alliance). As a KAAC board member for the 2020-2021 year, I served on the Curriculum, Finance, and Camp Committees. Working with Kate Mastronicola, I also helped coordinate and implement the virtual 2021 Governor's Cup State Championship. As a KQBA board member for the past two years, I have created academic team study guides for posting on the KQBA website, discussed and helped to implement policy and procedures, and aided in preparing and staffing quizbowl tournaments.
As a Content Creator
My nearly thirty years of experience with academic teams as competitor, coach, and camp staffer have also afforded me the opportunity to hone my skills at creating study guides and questions focused on competition curricula. Since 2001, I have operated The Question Connection to write questions and provide practice and study materials for academic competition. I have created content for KAAC's competitions and served as a question writer for NAQT and the National History Bee and Bowl. I have created academic team-focused course materials for Qwiz's summer camps and their online study sessions, such Qwiz Night Live. I even managed to finally persuade my school's administration to approve an Academic Enrichment class for academic team students; for this class and for our weekly subject-area practices, I created many informative study guides, presentations, and homework assignments. In short, I am quite experienced in using academic curriculum guidelines to create both questions and other study material.
To view samples of academic competition study materials I have created, click the links below.
- Click here to view a presentation covering The Arabian Nights, and click here to view the accompanying homework assignment for academic team students
- Click here to view an interactive presentation over Greek Architecture that asks students to research as they work through the content
- Click here to view a presentation covering Norse mythology, and click here to view the accompanying homework for academic team students
- Click here to view an early American literature study guide
- Click here to watch a video in which I present an Introduction to Medieval Literature for Qwiz Night Live's online series of academic team study sessions
Click here to view my shared Google Drive folder with curated resources for coaches and students; some resources are my own and others have been gathered from publicly available or out-of-print resources, but I make all of these available to help students and coaches in their pursuit of knowledge
Click here to visit the website for The Question Connection, a question-writing and content-creating business I have operated since 2001