Golden Apple Award: Dena Newsome, Cloud Springs Elementary

CATOOSA COUNTY, Ga. (WDEF) — This week’s Golden Apple teacher award was presented to Mrs. Dena Newsome. She is a third-grade teacher at Cloud Springs Elementary.

“Mrs. Newsome is amazing. She’s a very caring teacher,” Principal Lori Welborn said. “She has had these students twice, once in kindergarten and now again in third grade. She is teaching them math. On a recent achievement test, 98 percent of the kids showed growth from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year. So, she is doing a bang-up job here at Cloud Springs Elementary School teaching math to third graders.”

When asked, “Who is Dena Newsome?” Mrs. Newsome responded, “She is a wife and a mom, and a teacher. She is a friend and a lover of books, and of spending time with her family.”

We asked the students how they would describe Mrs. Newsome in one word. Their responses were, “kind, the best teacher, nice, a good math teacher, beautiful, good, fun, loyal, loving, wonderful, a great mother, smart, sweet, helpful,” and “my favorite teacher in this school.”

“When I was in school, I had several teachers that inspired me, and they took me under their wing. I really appreciated them. I wanted to be just like them,” Newsome said.

One third-grade student said, “She is the best at teaching us how to do math and reading the questions sometimes, when you don’t know how to read. She’s good at a lot of things, like she helps other kids too. She helps teachers with stuff, and she also helps parents with stuff.”

“What I like best about teaching, I like to see the kids grow,” Newsome said. “I want them to be problem solvers, I want them to be able to take any problem and think it through and figure out a solution.”