McKinney shines as Lumpkin's STAR student

Lumpkin County High School Principal Billy Kirk stopped by senior Will McKinney’s Calculus class recently with a big announcement to make: the name of the STAR student for 2023/2024.
When Kirk revealed that McKinney had earned the honor, his peers broke out in applause.
Kirk asked the teacher of the class, math department head Don Brock, if he would step forward and take a photo of McKinney with the administrators.
As Brock was getting ready to take the picture, Kirk mentioned to McKinney that he would only have 24 hours to choose his STAR teacher.
“Well, I can do that now,” McKinney said to everyone’s surprise.
He nodded toward Brock. “There’s no contest.”
Brock said he was stunned by the acknowledgement.
“Mr. Kirk was like, ‘Whoa, look at that. This never happens … Coach Brock is speechless.’”
“It still even kind of gets me, because this is an artist. This is a literary kid. This is a kid that is totally humanities,” Brock said. “And he’s choosing his Calculus teacher.”

SHINING STAR

The STAR student is chosen each year by the Professional Association of Georgia Educators [PAGE] for achieving the highest single-sitting SAT score in the school and meeting other stringent academic requirements, such as maintaining a GPA in the top 10 percent of the class.
That student, in turn, gets to select the STAR teacher who has made the biggest impact on their academic career so far.
When Kirk presented the awards at a recent Board of Education meeting, he noted that McKinney had helped him out of a recent substitute teaching jam.
“Every now and again when we have a sub shortage, I’ll go in and do a class. And I had to go in … an Honors-level Calculus class, and the most math that I took in high school was Algebra II.”
Feeling overwhelmed, Kirk asked if a student could help explain the material.
“The people in the class sort of volunteered me to do it,” McKinney said. “It was an interesting experience, because I’ve had experience teaching before, just not math. I had to kind of figure it out as I went through it.”

THE HUMANITIES

McKinney, son of Tracy and Austin McKinney, said it would be difficult to choose a favorite academic subject, but indicated the humanities are likely his greatest strength.
“Consistently, it’s probably been ELA [English Language Arts]. But with my latest math teacher that I’ve had, he’s made math really interesting … Coach Brock has been my teacher for the last three semesters, and he’s just done a really good job of helping me to understand the math side of things and helping me to sort of become more well-rounded.”

MUSICAL MIND

Music has also played a big part in McKinney’s high school career; he was the high tenor in a quartet that claimed first place at last year’s region and state literary meets, alongside fellow students Dylan Henschen, Michael Young and McKinney’s younger brother, Jack.
McKinney hinted that he will likely continue singing after high school.
“I have an audition on Saturday for the University of Georgia Choir, and we were just practicing for that a little bit. I’m hoping to get some more auditions to more college choirs and continue singing at the next level.”
McKinney also joined the Georgia Pick and Bow program about seven years ago. He learned to play fiddle, banjo and guitar, before eventually moving into an instructor role.
He’s also a member of the popular local band, the Bells and Whistles.
“It’s been really fun teaching kids how to play music and sort of helping them learn how to play the Appalachian style,” McKinney said.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY

Brock said he was not surprised to hear that McKinney had achieved the highest score on the SAT, because he tends to absorb information from every discipline, and can therefore approach questions in a more comprehensive way.
“The way that he thinks about content in general, he’s thinking about it at a deeper level and in a more creative way. He assimilates the information across different curriculums and disciplines. It is not uncommon for Will to say, when we’re talking about something in Calculus, ‘This kind of reminds me of…’ and it may be something from science, or from social studies or English, and many times it’s music.”
McKinney, meanwhile, praised Brock for not just going “through the motions of teaching.”
“He takes time to answer any questions, and he doesn’t get all grumpy when we ask questions … He’s patient about that kind of thing. He’s open to helping us in whatever way he can. It almost seems like whenever someone has a question, he has the exact way that can help that individual person think about it in a way that helps them,” McKinney said.

BRIGHT FUTURE

In addition to his academic and musical ability, McKinney has also proven himself to be a talented tennis player as well.
“Right now I’m in the middle of the tennis season and I’m playing doubles with my brother, actually. We started 2-0 on the season and we’re hoping to make a deep playoff run, which we did last year. We’re hoping to do that again,” McKinney said.
At the same time, McKinney is also busy applying to potential universities.
“I’ve been accepted into two colleges: UGA and Suwannee up in Tennessee. And I am still waiting to hear back from four more that I applied to ‘regular decision,’ and those would be Duke, Dartmouth, Vermont and Emory,” he said.
When asked if he would ever consider teaching as a potential career, McKinney said he has thought about it, but has not made up his mind yet.
“Conciseness is definitely something I need to work on, actually. I tend to ramble a lot. If I go through college and decide education is the route I want to head towards, then I will definitely keep that open as an option,” he said.