A Man of Principle

The environment at Malcolm X can be quite distracting: During this lesson, police sirens wail three times on the street.

At 2 o'clock, Pannell, who usually misses lunch, decides to pop in on a 6th grade math class and test the students. He quizzes them on exponents for a while, and to make it exciting, he fishes a dollar out of his pocket and offers it as a prize for answering a tough question: What is 549.1 times 10 squared? A girl wins it. Later, he tempts them with a $20 bill, but the kids are getting a bit rowdy, calling out answers and missing the misdirection in his question: What is a right triangle's degrees times seven squared? "I'm disappointed," he says when nobody wins the $20 jackpot. "I'm leaving, because you are not serious. You just want to holler out answers and not listen."

As the day wears on, the students and teachers long gone, Pannell surveys a mound of paperwork he has to complete—timecards, checks to be signed, forms to fill several teacher vacancies—and a number of other tasks he hasn't gotten to. It will be another late night. His mood darkens. "I can't work any more than I do. I can't do any more. There is nothing that I am not doing," he says. "You reach a point where you just say...whatever...whatever."

He reflects on the hours he puts in and on what they've cost him. "I missed my own daughter growing up," he says. "I call her 'Baby' and she says, 'Daddy, I'm no baby. I'm grown up.' She's in her second year of college." Just a week earlier, Pannell and his wife, Sheila, visited his family in West Virginia for Thanksgiving, "and my mother looked at me and said, 'Wow, you have aged. It's time for you to leave.' And I said, 'You're right.'"

Outside the school, in the darkness of evening, Pannell lights a cigarette and stands in the cold, looking out over the old Jewish cemetery across the street. "I'll have 25 years in at the end of this year," he says. "I am thinking this year may be it for me." Later, though, he will laugh off the idea of leaving.

There is learning going on in Room 401. Mr. Lumpkins is giving his 4th graders a reading lesson unlike anything these kids have had before. Brian Lumpkins, a second-year teacher who is 28, is using a wireless modem to connect an IBM ThinkPad to the Internet. He is surfing the Web and taking his class to a Web site he found. Here, projected on a six-foot screen, digital technology brings an old African folk tale to life. With each click, a new color drawing comes into focus on the screen, along with several sentences of text about the adventures of a tiger, a spider, and a firefly.

"The majority of my parents don't make the connection between what people do and the effects on their children."

John Pannell,
principal

The 18 students are sitting on the floor, eyes riveted to the screen. "Me! Me!" a handful of them clamor to be called on to read. They are competing hard because Mr. Lumpkins is allowing those who read and behave well to take turns operating the computer mouse.

"Make sure you read it just the way it is printed," Lumpkins says firmly. "Make sure you observe all the punctuation." The children's reading is halting but competent, though they don't recognize a few words, like "eventually," "scheme," and "huge," so Lumpkins stops to sound out and explain them.

Only one or two students are tuned out. One boy keeps making noise, and Lumpkins orders him to take a five-minute timeout. The rest of the class is buzzing with interest. As each screen brings up a few more sentences, Lumpkins asks the students what they think will happen next. Everyone has a theory.

The environment at Malcolm X can be quite distracting: During this lesson, police sirens wail three times on the street. The hallways outside 401 are particularly noisy because Malcolm X was built, in 1973, as an "open space" school—with classrooms separated by portable blackboards and bookcases instead of walls. Nonetheless, the Internet reading lesson is clearly a success. Children have not only practiced and enjoyed reading but also have learned about Web sites and search engines.

"We have things here you would never expect in a school like this," says Pannell proudly, regarding his concerted effort to bring technology to his classrooms.

The school operates five computer labs with 10 to 15 machines in each and uses sophisticated software to allow students to progress through self-paced math and reading lessons under the guidance of teachers and computer aides. In addition, almost every classroom is outfitted with several computers, and the school recently had its wiring upgraded to provide Internet access to every class. Pannell says he is particularly excited about this, planning "virtual field trips" for kids who rarely even get out of their neighborhood.

According to the school system's records, Malcolm X over the years has accumulated 60 computers. But Pannell actually has 156 working computers, thanks mostly to the partnerships he has developed with the Defense Intelligence Agency, a local power company, and several other businesses, churches, and organizations. He has carted dozens of machines to the school in his pickup truck, and he's learned to operate and install them. He has recruited volunteers to help maintain them. He secured a federal technology grant to buy 20 $600 wireless modems for use in the school library and classrooms.

So early in the school year, when Malcolm X got a fax from headquarters saying that the central office was coming out to take computer inventory, Pannell flew into a brief rage. Like most principals, he has endured years of scarce resources, uncertain supplies, and difficulty getting machines fixed. "Do you think I'm going to let the computers become part of their inventory?" he asked. "Do they really think for a minute that any principal is going to give them to them?"

So when the time came, all school system property was properly inventoried. But somehow the other machines were not immediately available for inspection.

The winter holiday assembly is supposed to be joyous, but Pannell has a little trouble getting into a festive mood because the tires on his '87 Mazda have been slashed again this week. Instead, he has decided to retaliate. On every student's chair at the December 22 event is a neon-pink letter home, informing parents and guardians that all after-school programs—all tutoring, all clubs—will be suspended until further notice.

"As we often hear the African proverb that 'it takes a whole village to raise a child,' it is also true that it takes the whole community to support the school," Pannell's letter says. "We want to provide extracurricular activities to our students and families, but the personal costs, personal risks, and personal losses are proving to be too high!

"Our school community members do not step forward to identify those persons responsible for acts of theft and vandalism. ...Therefore, until the perpetrators of these acts are identified, we must discontinue all activities" outside school hours.

Pannell believes his car was attacked by a parent of one of the dozens of children he has suspended recently, but he knows he will never be able to prove that. Yet he wants to send a message to the community. "The majority of my parents don't make the connection between what people do and the effects on their children," he says. "They don't make the connection between seeing people writing graffiti on the wall or a guy dumping trash at the school or breaking bottles or stealing something—they don't connect that to their children."

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