Kelly Adsit, one of Madison’s Psychology teachers, left for maternity leave this summer, which is expected to last until the end of the first semester. Replacing her is former lawyer William Vincent.
Vincent was born in Washington D.C. and he has lived in northern Virginia since 1995. He is married and has a daughter who goes to school in Fairfax County.

“I’ve worked in law and public policy for 27 years, but both my parents were in education, so I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to teach,” said VIncent. “I’m in a point in my life where it just seems natural.”

Vincent went to the University of Connecticut, where he majored in economics with a minor in Psychology. After earing his justice degree, he became a lawyer, working with corporations, civil litigation, and public advocacy. Vincent is still a practicing lawyer, all while he career-switched to education. He says he is happy to be teaching at Madison and that he is impressed with the students’ diligence.

“Madison is great. The staff has been very helpful in helping me switch careers, the school is very highly ranked in the state, and the kids are clearly very dedicated,” Vincent said.

The class is essentially Vincent’s, only following Adsit’s curriculum. Vincent develops his lesson plans and he prides himself in aiming to make Psychology interesting and meaningful.

“I really try to involve the students in the work and not just lecture and hand out note-sheets every class,” Vincent said.

For example, to teach that correlation is not causation, Vincent does not simply play a slideshow and make students memorize print from handouts. Instead, he has them perform a coin-flip experiment so they can learn the concept firsthand through application.

“Mr. Vincent’s class is one of my favorites this year because we’re always doing activities and experiments and the like so the classes aren’t boring,” said Erika Atwood (17’).

Making it a goal to not “over-lecture,” Vincent works hard to keep his class interactive, so his students never lose interest and have fun learning at the same time.

Vincent’s class is not what Madison students would regularly expect from an AP class. Although the work load is typical, the methods of teaching by Vincent are a fresh sight to students.