The Learning Curve Jack Johnson Pannell
[00:00:00] Alisha Searcy: Welcome to the Learning Curve podcast. I am your co-host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and joined by our other co-host, Dr. Albert Cheng. Hey, Albert.
[00:00:29] Albert Cheng: Hey alisha. How you doing?
[00:00:31] Alisha Searcy: I am doing well. I hope you are.
[00:00:34] Albert Cheng: Yeah, can’t complain. Middle of October, wrapping up, fall break here at the university. It’s that time of year.
[00:00:40] Alisha Searcy: It is.
[00:00:41] I was in the store the other day and bought some holiday decorations already, so it is that time of year. It’s hard to believe that it’s here already, but here we are. That’s right. That’s right. Here we are. Well, we’ve got an interesting show today. Looking forward to this, but of course, before we jump into having our guests, it’s time for some news of the week.
[00:01:03] Would you like to go first with what you’re reading?
[00:01:06] Albert Cheng: Yeah, sure. Alisha, you know, it was recently that I learned that Dr. Angelette Duckworth is actually leading this massive. Study about cell phone policies in schools. I’ve been anxious to see what she found and I think she’s only now starting to release some results with, you know, data collection now getting to that place.
[00:01:27] And so there’s actually a news article about it now, the title of the news article, and I think it’s mostly a headline grabber to get your attention. It says The stricter the cell phone policy, the happier the teacher research finds. Um, but. There’s a lot more in the article. It’s not just that finding, and I just wanna recommend our, our listeners look at it.
[00:01:46] I mean, we’re wrestling with cell phones and you know, I mean, next week we’re gonna have a guest talk about not just cell phones, but just addictions in general, but. Even if you think cell phones are, are, are a big problem and social media’s a problem, you know, we’re still left with this question of what do we do in schools?
[00:02:02] What’s the best policy to mm-hmm. Balance kinda these competing needs and priorities and, you know, we’re kind of at this place where, where we need some evidence to help inform some of those decisions. So I think some of this is starting to come out now with the study that Angela Duckworth is leading.
[00:02:18] So anyway, I, I just wanna flag this for everyone to start looking at and as we think through this issue, some more.
[00:02:24] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, and I’ve staked my claim in this already and I won’t go into a long diatribe, but I think it’s interesting and the research is important. We wanna know. What’s actually happening is these policies passed across the country.
[00:02:37] As a parent, I still have a concern of not having access to my kid if there’s an emergency, and so I recognize that from a teaching and learning standpoint, it’s a more promising policy because kids are paying more attention and of course teachers like it more. Yeah, and I would still argue though that I wish there was also some research being done of the opposite of how schools.
[00:03:01] Are incorporating more technology, IE telephones into teaching and learning to see how that could actually maximize the experience. So I like you, I’m looking forward to seeing what the research says, and I hope that both sides, if you will, are going to conduct it. Wouldn’t that be nice?
[00:03:17] Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:18] And, and actually, you know, to your point, just to tease this little bit, you know, in their study it looks like they’re evaluating lots of different kinds of approaches, and so you’ve got. Kinda the more extreme ones where the cell phone’s gotta be locked up or kept at home. And then you’ve got ones that are a little more lenient where the cell phone has to just, you know, be outta sight, but you know, it’s still kind of in arm’s reach of the student and it looks like different policies are gonna lead to different, uh, effects.
[00:03:45] So I’m glad to see the study, try to tease some of the differences between these policies out. So let, let’s see what they find.
[00:03:53] Alisha Searcy: What an excellent point you just made. Thank you for that. Said like a true professor. Thank you. Well, thank you. Gotta account for all of those variables. I appreciate. That’s, I guess so.
[00:04:03] Yes. I like that a lot. The story that I have this week is from Education Next, what Public School Leaders Can Learn From School Choice by Ronald Thomas. So I think this article is really important as he points out that these opportunities for private school, whether it’s the tax credit scholarship, or whether it’s ESAs or other programs, that there’s a lot of parent interest.
[00:04:26] And of course, he lays out the arguments that anti private school choice folks have talked about. It’s a way to defund public education, all of that. And, and I, I won’t get into any of those things because I think the importance of this article is talking about. What public schools can learn from this, and he points out one quote that I think is really good.
[00:04:48] He says, well, there’s another quote that he’s quoting in the article. I should say, if we’re going to keep public schools, school administrators need to figure out a new delivery model. Which very much sounds like something Howard Fuller would say. And it goes on to say that all in one schools are increasingly not what people want.
[00:05:06] If districts don’t adapt, private schools will continue to gain popularity regardless of how good or bad they are. He says he agrees with that quote. I do too. We have a program in Georgia that just started this year, and interestingly, Albert. 52% of the families who’ve taken advantage of the ESA are African American.
[00:05:27] : Hmm.
[00:05:27] Alisha Searcy: And that’s a disproportionately higher number than the African American population in the state. What was also very interesting to me is that 32% of the families were kindergarten. Which means that these families aren’t even considering public school. They’re starting at kindergarten. And so someone asked me, you know, what were my thoughts about the numbers?
[00:05:48] And I said, it’s really a clarion call to public schools because regardless of how you feel about private or not. Parents are screaming loud that they want options. And I think if public schools really want to protect public education and I’m in that business, we’ve gotta be talking about choice. We’ve gotta be talking about options for parents within the public schools so that they know.
[00:06:12] Something is available to them other than just what they’re zoned to go to.
[00:06:15] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. And so
[00:06:16] Alisha Searcy: I appreciated this article and him pointing that out, and I hope that folks in public education will read it and understand. It’s why I’m a big proponent of public school choice. I just believe that, you know, one size does not fit all and we need options in the system and they shouldn’t have to go to private school to get options.
[00:06:35] Albert Cheng: Yeah, well said. And it just kind of reminds me of, you know, a show last week where we, we talked about, you know, these charter schools that focused heavily on academics. And then, you know, we’re gonna have our guests talk about is All Boys Micro School. You know, and I don’t know about you, but you know, one of the reasons I love, you know, having these school leaders as guests on the show is to just help.
[00:06:56] Everyone kind of imagine what the possibilities are in education. Yeah. And so, you know, whatever sector you’re at. But certainly with respect to your article, public school leaders having to kind of now reckon with, uh, new kind of school choice environment, I hope this leads to more opportunities and, and this willingness to serve our parents and families better.
[00:07:15] Alisha Searcy: Yes. And innovation. How about that? That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. So very well said, and thank you for sharing that. We’re actually having a school leader with us next, so make sure you stay tuned. We have with us Jack Johnson Pinnell, who is the head of school and founder of Trinity Art Preparatory School for boys.
[00:07:35] We’ll be right back.
[00:07:48] Jack Johnson Pinnell is the head of school and founder of Trinity Arch Preparatory School for Boys. As a founder of a boys Public charter school in Baltimore, Mr. Pinnell gained national recognition for student outcomes. He’s the recipient of the prestigious Aspen Bahara Education Fellowship, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and moderates team Socrates for the Aspen Institute.
[00:08:13] Mr. Pinnell is the co-author of an award-winning coming of age novel lunch Money Can’t shoot. He’s engaged in Global Boys Education Matters as a North American International Boys School Coalition. Trustee, an Amherst College graduate with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies. He also holds a JD degree from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, and earned a certificate from the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program in School Management and Leadership.
[00:08:41] Jack, thank you so much for joining us. We’re very excited to have you.
[00:08:45] Jack Johnson Pannell: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
[00:08:48] Alisha Searcy: First of all, I just wanna say thank you for the incredible work that you have done over the years with students, and particularly with boys.
[00:08:54] Jack Johnson Pannell: It’s been quite an adventure.
[00:08:56] Alisha Searcy: I am sure. We’re looking forward to hearing more about that.
[00:09:00] And so you’ve had a remarkable career as an education leader heading up a charter school and now founding a micro school. Can you talk with us about your background, your formative educational experiences, and how they’ve shaped your overall philosophy about schooling?
[00:09:17] Jack Johnson Pannell: Oh, that’s a great and big question, and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to think about this probably every single day in one way or another.
[00:09:25] I can see that the work I’m doing comes from formative experiences. I grew up in Ohio, went to public schools, and one thing that doesn’t always come out in some of my biographical material is that I was. The first black kid sent to an all white school in the seventies, and that’s somewhat the basis of the book that I wrote.
[00:09:48] Lunch, money Can’t Shoot, and at the same time that I was sent to that school, my father was very involved with the naacp, my mother. Was a well-known person in our community. And so I think my parents put me into this situation as an experiment and desegregation not, I think I know, and they were part of a group of parents that actually sued the school district on segregated schools.
[00:10:16] But I did well in my high school and I had an opportunity to. Head East from Ohio to a little place called Amherst College in Massachusetts. Some of you guys are from Massachusetts or live in Massachusetts, and I fell in love with what I would call the world of ideas that Amherst as a liberal arts school, one of the oldest in the country, is so uniquely focused on.
[00:10:42] And I always think that if I would’ve gone to Ohio State how different, and I had an opportunity to do that. How different my life would’ve been in terms of what a higher level education should look like.
[00:10:56] Albert Cheng: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:56] Jack Johnson Pannell: And I believe firmly in the ideal the liberal arts education forms people into where ideals matter and the discussion and clash and deep exploration that a liberal arts education requires.
[00:11:13] Helps you to become a thinking person in society. And we need thinking people in society. And I’ve always thought that education should be about thinking. And you’ll hear later that the foundational habits of mind that are required in my current school, Trinity Arts Prep, is that we want our boys to think critically.
[00:11:37] Reason analytically communicate clearly and confidently. Creatively solve problems and demonstrate self-leadership. All that relates back to my educational journey and what I think is transformative. I didn’t immediately go into education after I graduated from Amherst. I instead went to Wall Street and worked on Wall Street for a couple years and then moved into the entertainment business in Hollywood.
[00:12:07] I’ve had like five careers and I’m in my best space of my work life today. Nice. And then I went off to law school and then I moved into politics. And I wanna mention the politics part because my first job on Capitol Hill was with the late Congressman John Lewis. And that was a really another formative experience in politics for me.
[00:12:31] I grew up in a political family and I got a chance to work with John, help him write his first book, and really saw through his eyes and his experience. Of what are the civil rights issues of our time. It wasn’t just a frozen period of time that we struggled with civil rights issues for African Americans and others, that that’s an ongoing discussion.
[00:12:55] And I actually see the work I’m doing education as being another form of the civil rights issue. Mm-hmm. That I think everyone’s entitled. If not by the constitution. And as you know, many state constitutions don’t even guarantee a fundable right to education. But I think as a democratic society, we have a responsibility to give families and people the absolute best education in including the civic educ.
[00:13:22] Alisha Searcy: Wow, what a very powerful story. I did not know you had that connection to John Lewis. I’m here in Georgia and he was certainly one of my mentors. So now that tells me a lot more about you. That does not appear in your bio. Yes. What a powerful story. And you mentioned this, but I wanna dig a little bit deeper.
[00:13:42] You talked about your undergraduate degree in liberal arts, and you also mentioned that you have a law degree, which are very unique credentials when we talk about American K 12 leaders. Can you talk about the importance of this liberal arts, American studies and the law, and providing teachers and young people alike?
[00:14:00] The academic foundations on which a wider, more civic-minded education have often? Been based and how you’ve seen that level of education impact the students that you’ve led over the years?
[00:14:13] Jack Johnson Pannell: I think the CSP of education and the more I study it, you know, there’s lots of talk about why public education was formed to, you know, I’m not so sure the early years of education, which began in Massachusetts, I think.
[00:14:31] I’m not so sure they were about the formation of principled and moral people in society. I think there was a more utilitarian, ideal public education, which is that we wanna make sure people have a reasonable basis for knowledge to function in a very. Industrial society. Mm-hmm. And therefore, I think that places like Amherst and Liberal Arts and the Ivy Leagues and all that came became an elite version of education.
[00:15:02] We actually have two parallel worlds of education, the, the world of private school education and the world of public school education. And I sometimes don’t see how they intersect. It seems to me the public education is very compliance and input driven and private education. It seems to be more about the formation of people into great human beings, very different goals.
[00:15:30] And I wonder, I mean, the work I’m doing is that I question everything, and I think that’s the gift that Amherst gave me more than anything else, is to question everything and to ask why, and to always be in a perpetual state. Of asking, undermining assumptions, probing assumptions and all that. So I, what I see in education is that many people are in education.
[00:15:59] It’s one of the biggest industries in this country in terms of professionalism, but people are in it. We have no agreement on what education is. And quite interestingly, when. I have studied schools and other nations like the Commonwealth Nations, and there seems to be more agreement on what is the purpose of education.
[00:16:26] What are we trying to do in K 12 education? For instance, you would not, maybe you would be surprised, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, but in England, which has a very stratified educational system, it’s still rather you’re a public school like Eden or a government school in the middle of London. They’re all evaluated by the state and they all actually receive money from the state.
[00:16:53] And I wonder why in America we’ve never been able to have. A common agreement on what is the purpose of education.
[00:17:04] Alisha Searcy: That’s an excellent question. Wow. Definitely one that we need to ponder. I feel like we need a whole conversation on that, given all that’s happening in education in the world and, and speaking of that, in recent decades across American education, there’s been a steady stream of fads, including school to work, 21st century skills and social emotional learning.
[00:17:27] Yes. To name a few.
[00:17:28] Jack Johnson Pannell: Yes.
[00:17:29] Alisha Searcy: So as we talk about the purpose of education, can you discuss the relationship between these, what seems like endless educational fads in America’s ongoing struggles to improve students’ academic achievement?
[00:17:43] Jack Johnson Pannell: Wow. It’s big question. I think for some reason everyone wants a magic bullet in education.
[00:17:50] And I think it’s funny to me because no one child that you’re teaching this in front of you. Exactly alike. And I don’t even think we know a lot about brain science. I don’t think at Trinity Arts Prep, when I opened this school, I didn’t see a reason to have grade levels because I haven’t seen a justification.
[00:18:16] That makes sense to me of what you think a fourth grader should know and why they should know that in fourth grade, other than reading. I think if you don’t, if you’re not able to read by age 11 and 12, it’s gonna be very hard for you to catch up and reading. Mm-hmm. But there’s so much even disagreement on how people learn to read.
[00:18:38] I’ve come to the conclusion that boys in particular are late readers, and that’s okay. They will eventually learn how to read. I don’t think everyone learns how to read through phonics. I don’t think everyone, I think families are very different. If you come from a highly verbal family, you’re probably going to know by, you know, age six or seven a million words.
[00:18:59] You would’ve heard a million words. You all know that great study.
[00:19:03] Alisha Searcy: Yes.
[00:19:03] Jack Johnson Pannell: But if you’re in a nonverbal family, a low education family in the center of Baltimore, yes, you’re gonna struggle with reading. And I have thought about reading a lot in this iteration of this phase, the season of my life. And I think reading, I’m just giving you one example of fads.
[00:19:22] I, you know, there’s a great debate on the science of reading. There’s a great debate and, and a lot of these debates, by the way, come about because there are people who wanna make a profit. So they’re generating a problem and then they’re offering their solution with some curriculum or something like that.
[00:19:41] I was at a, uh, a long conference last week with Christian educators and I’ve summed up our work around the study of the English language. We just call it plain old English. We don’t call it English language arts. We don’t call it anything else like that. And for us, for with boys teaching boys, it boils down to five things.
[00:20:00] One is reading. Listening, writing, speaking, and storytelling that I think will help you master the English language. And we do some form of that every single day, and I can measure that growth. We start our Mondays with storytelling and, and I realized this, this is after I’ve been in boys education for 15 years, I realized that every boy.
[00:20:32] Knows how to tell stories. They tell stories with each other all day long. But when you ask them, Hey, tell me what your story is for this weekend, and I don’t want you just to tell me the story that you went to grandmother’s house. I want you to articulate your experience in an exquisite detail. What does Grandma’s house smell like?
[00:20:57] What is your favorite food at Grandma’s house? How do you know if she’s prepared it the same way? She’s always prepared it. Who’s always at grandma’s house? What’s your favorite item in grandma’s house? It’s just like, how do you start to articulate the world as a part of your imagination and a part of your lived experience?
[00:21:20] And that’s what I think creates a kind of literacy. That leads to other explorations of ideas. Yesterday, which was Columbus Day, I asked our boys, and he’s sitting in this room and he’s smiling. Mm-hmm. I asked him, who knows who Christopher Columbus is, and this young man, his name is, we call him b. B said, I think I studied Christopher Columbus in third grade.
[00:21:52] No one else knew who Christopher Columbus was, and here was an opportunity for me to think, Hmm, why don’t they know who Christopher Columbus was? ’cause I’m sure when I was a kid, we did plays about Christopher Columbus. Mm-hmm. We dressed up like Christopher Columbus. You know, we did all that stuff. We studied Topher Columbus, and so why did we do that?
[00:22:16] And this gave us an opportunity in a seminar conversation to have a discussion on who was Christopher Columbus? Was he a good guy? Was he a bad guy? Was he a mister of both? Who are the indigenous people? Why did we change it to the indigenous day? We had a deep exploratory conversation better than any lesson in history could have possibly been.
[00:22:40] Yeah. So how does this be relate, Alisha, back to your ideal of being fads? That I think the fads are for people who want it easy. Mm-hmm. But I think that education. Is hard stuff requires preparation and hard work by the educators sitting with kids not standing in front of kids.
[00:22:59] Alisha Searcy: Yes. I love that. Wow. I love the way you walked us through that to help us to understand frankly, what teaching and learning looks like at your school and what you’ve been doing for the last 15 years.
[00:23:12] That’s incredible. And I wish that frankly more. Educators and more schools, right. Had the ability, the flexibility, the skillset to be able to do that and teach in that way.
[00:23:25] Jack Johnson Pannell: That’s a challenge. It’s like, how do I, one, how do we teach others to think that way? And, and the million dollar question for me is, do you have to be exceptionally bright to do this?
[00:23:36] I’m not saying that I’m exceptionally bright, but I do think that we’re teaching people in a traditional setting. To be lazy thinkers.
[00:23:48] : Hmm.
[00:23:49] Jack Johnson Pannell: And I do think we have to teach habits of mind where we’re active thinkers. And I would say the reason why this is important today is because, and the boys will tell you this, is that how do we know what we know?
[00:24:06] So in that discussion of Christopher Columbus yesterday, how do we know that Christopher Columbus was a. I asked a question at the end of our seminar, and I always have a hard question and they’re not always ready for it. If Christopher Columbus did not discover the New World, then who would’ve? Mm, I’m not sure.
[00:24:28] Everyone dares to ask hard questions like that. In fact, in my experience, teachers do not. Your typical certified teacher coming out of education school doesn’t like to ask questions that they don’t know the answer to.
[00:24:43] Alisha Searcy: Or that may not be found on a test somewhere.
[00:24:45] Jack Johnson Pannell: Yeah. Exactly.
[00:24:48] Alisha Searcy: Very interesting point.
[00:24:50] You’ve talked about how you are teaching boys in particular. Can you talk about the work that you’ve done with the Aspen Global Leadership Network where you’ve moderated the Teen Socrates program for the institute?
[00:25:04] : Yeah. Um,
[00:25:05] Alisha Searcy: talk about that and some of the best ways to engage teenagers, especially boys in the world of academics and ideas.
[00:25:11] And you’ve talked about some of that already, but would love to hear more.
[00:25:15] Jack Johnson Pannell: So the Aspen model, if, if you don’t know, the Aspen Institute came out of a, a University of Chicago professor who really believed that the best way to create civil society is to have a thorough understanding of, I would say, first principles and first ideas, and where they come from and what’s their relevance today.
[00:25:36] And so it’s done through the aspiration of text. Text based discussions, which we replicate all the time here. Uh, once a week we have a, a seminar discussion. Tomorrow we’re gonna discuss Beowulf. The goal around the table, and we literally call around the table is to again, push ideals around, unpack them, read the texts deeply, and kind of land on important questions.
[00:26:09] That open our minds to new ideas and new ways of thinking and perspectives. It really is a discipline that will be with you for the rest of your life. And I think a discipline that is more important now, more than ever, because when we look at texts, when we look at facts, how do we know if that’s true or not true until we start to ask questions.
[00:26:38] So my work in Aspen with Team Socrates allows us to sit down with extraordinary young men and women who rise to an extraordinary level of conversation, almost as if they’ve never been able to. We always preface discussion there. This is no one is grading you on your ideals. No one is judging you as a be ideal or a C idea.
[00:27:05] Everything is up for grabs in this conversation, and I think that’s empowering to many learners across many kinds of intellectual abilities to be at the table as a peer with other people who are thinking with you through a text.
[00:27:24] Albert Cheng: This is Albert here and I am, you know, even here kind of like taking notes of ways to just reflect on my own teaching.
[00:27:30] Right. This is great and insightful, but I wanna make sure we get to talk about some of your work leading some particular schools. So let’s start with the charter school that you founded in and led in Baltimore. Could you share with our listeners Yeah. What was that school and, and what were some of the strengths and limitations you experienced?
[00:27:48] Operating a, a charter school. Thank you
[00:27:50] Jack Johnson Pannell: for that question. I landed in Baltimore over 15 years ago, maybe even 20 years now, to start a tuition free Episcopal school, and we weren’t very successful in doing that longer story, and I pivoted and said. Why don’t I, Episcopal school for boys, for inner city boys that we wanted to do a tuition free each school.
[00:28:15] And I pivoted and said I can start a charter school, and I was told. What do you know about education, Jack? You’ve never taught in a inner, inner city school. What do you know? And I went about and studied and visited over a hundred schools and I asked hard questions. I think sometimes when you come out of a, you are in the outside looking in.
[00:28:40] I think you can ask harder questions than if you’re the inside trying to reform things. And Baltimore is a and still is, and this is a controversial statement. I’m about to make a controversial statement. So spoiler alert is a hard city. A lot of children have a hard start in that city. I would say over 30%, 40% of black children are living in poverty or near poverty.
[00:29:08] At the school that I established, uh, which was 98% African American boys, 70% of them were living in poverty or near poverty. 70% were from the poorest and worse schools in a segregated school system and only, and we started in fourth grade, only 20% smaller than that were reading at grade level. At the upper level, 40%, 50% of these numbers escape me, but they’re pretty close.
[00:29:37] Who were graduating from high school on time, 6% of those black young men who graduated from high school would go on to two or four year colleges, and I saw not a great people weren’t alarmed by those outcomes, and it had been the same outcomes for 50 years. So I am a fighter. And I like to tilt windmills and I went about creating a school that I think Black Boys deserved, which was a high quality school with great teaching.
[00:30:12] We developed Collegiate Teaching Fellows, which were recent college graduates who every boy had a tutorial and reading and math every day through these fellows and all that. The school district resisted that program that I brought in. The school system. Our authorizer was also the school district. So the school district resisted some work we were doing with Success Academy in New York City, which was doing some phenomenal, some of the best work of the country around urban school children increasing their reading levels.
[00:30:44] We were able to move, uh, coldhearted boys over several years from the bottom percentile to the top percentile in reading and math. We outpaced the district. And that was when the challenges happened of a more severe nature. When we outpaced the school district and became, we started with five, we had 500 kids in the school and 500 families on the wait list.
[00:31:13] Families were clamoring to get into our school and we were doing great work and I think we were upsetting the apple cart. Which is kind of what charter schools work created to be laboratories of innovation and to share those innovations with traditional school systems so that we could improve outcomes for all children.
[00:31:36] But I think there was a threatening aspect to it, and we had so many compliance come. Something as simple as I wanted our boys at lunchtime to use lunchtime as a time for conversation, which we do now at my current school. I think that lunchtime can be just as much as a learning opportunity as a classroom.
[00:31:58] And I had ordered these round cafeteria tables. The school district told me that there was a federal rule that you could not have round school tables. I’m not making this up.
[00:32:14] I’m not making this up. I had to change the tables. Uh, yeah, and a lot of compliance thing that has nothing to do with anything and a little focus on the things that really matter. So that’s frustrating. I’m very proud of that school. I am not so proud of it today. This is controversial. It has gone into the garbage can of education and it’s sad.
[00:32:39] Albert Cheng: Sorry to hear that. And it sounds like maybe what, what you just told us has something to do with you starting Trinity Arch Prep, your all boys Christian school in Phoenix. Yeah. Could you share that story? Uh, tell us about the school, the mission, the students, and the origin story.
[00:32:55] Jack Johnson Pannell: Yes, I have a good friend who said to me, have you thought about Arizona?
[00:33:03] And I had never been to Arizona. I received a grant from the Drexel Fund, which is an organization that helps build private schools and exploratory grant, and I came out to Arizona. And the great thing about Arizona that lots of people are easily accessible. There are very few gatekeepers in Arizona, which I love.
[00:33:22] It’s not the east coast kind of thing. And I met and talked to a lot of people and Arizona, I came at the time in which there were universal vouchers created in Arizona, and I saw that as an opportunity to create really socially, economically diverse schools because you could create a private school.
[00:33:44] And you could charge a tuition that’s reasonable and also allow access for all families. And I also started to see and believe in the role of faith in education and how that can be transformative. And I think our school. Is as was the school in Baltimore. It’s just not about education. It’s a transformational education.
[00:34:08] That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, is I think too much education is transactional at all levels. K through 12 and also university level. I think the education should and ought to be transformational. The boys walking in the door that we care about what kind of man they’re gonna become. And particularly in the context of today where boys and men are in so much trouble, the.
[00:34:31] Mental health outcomes, not just to what was happening in Baltimore in terms of poverty and literacy, but also across the board. Boys, regardless of race or class, are struggling. And what I’m able to do with Trinity Arch Prep is really one structure of school that has three hours of core academics every day, that we have athletics and physical training every single day, and that we have faith and character woven through our school.
[00:34:59] And all that’s based on a Christian ethos, but we’re open to children of all faith. One kid at my current school is a Jewish kid, but their parents are striving and want a value driven education for their children. And I also wanted to, was paying attention that I think after COVID, COVID taught us several things, and one thing is when kids returned to school after being at a home.
[00:35:27] I have yet to find a boy who’s excited about sitting in a classroom seven hours a day, five days a week. In a traditional setting with direct instruction in front of the board. We do not do direct instruction at Trinity Arch Prep. We have tutors. We don’t even call our teachers. Teachers, we call them tutors.
[00:35:49] They’re not your classic tutors either. I would say they’re more tutors in the traditional British Oxford, Cambridge Sense. They’re side by side learners with the learners sitting with you. And we do three hours of academics. We don’t need six hours of academics, and everything in the school has an intention behind it.
[00:36:10] And so we’re more than just a school. I think we’re a transformative place. I’m able to create, for the first time in my life in education, a truly transformative place where we’re seeing amazing results.
[00:36:23] Albert Cheng: That’s so great to hear and, and you know, I’m just really encouraged to hear that there’s a gem, it sounds like that exists in Phoenix.
[00:36:29] So thanks for sharing that. Now, I know you’ve made some controversial statements so far in this interview, at least you, you said the statements are controversial. I didn’t think they were that bad. Um. I wanna get to this topic. I mean, you mentioned Trinity Arch Prep is a religious school that uses Arizona’s private school choice program for its students.
[00:36:47] And so this issue of school choice and religion, you know, controversial topic here. Could you talk about how you’ve thought of this? What’s the importance in the relationship between the two and how do you integrate the religious dimensions with your more kind of academic curricular goals with your boys?
[00:37:04] Jack Johnson Pannell: I’m a faithful christian, but I will tell you that. I’m discovering there are all types of religious based education and I have parents call me sometimes and they’ll ask me questions that I think are interesting and I’ll put quotation marks about interesting. They’ll ask me, I had a flat earth call me once and she wanted to know what our science looked like, and I said to her, probably flippantly I said.
[00:37:34] Oh, we care about dinosaurs here. And I realized that was kind of flip comment, but I think you can, and this is where it comes back to the force of ideas. Hmm. I think you can hold in the same space that the Adam and Eve story of creation and also evolution. I think you can explore both. I’m not sure every Christian school in America would do that.
[00:38:00] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I get to make that decision and I get to tell parents this is what it’s going to be upfront when we talk about Christian values. And sometimes parents will call me and say, I didn’t know you were a Christian school. And I’ll say to them, well, we define Christianity as love, hope, and service to others.
[00:38:24] Do you have any disagreement with that? And they’ll say no. And I said, well, you know, we pray. I had a parent recently who left the school because she didn’t think we were Christian enough. She says, all you do is pray. And I thought that was interesting. Mm-hmm. Because we do more than that. But I think that we have to return to some values.
[00:38:49] I think families. Are struggling, parents are struggling with creating a baseline of values for their children. I think parenting has become counter-cultural and that you’re fighting with the culture the older your kid get. Particularly with I see with boys is like, you know, are you gonna accept the values of the world?
[00:39:13] Out there? Or do we have values within our household? Do we have values within our school? So like for instance, we, we have a very simple honor code. We don’t lie, cheat or steal. It’s that plain. We don’t lie, cheat or steal. There’s no exception to that. And I think clear standards like this is the bar.
[00:39:34] Mm-hmm. And I will tell you what boys are missing most in their education is. What’s the clear standard they wanna know. Mm-hmm. What is the clear standard? What do you want me to do? And no vagueness about that. So we’re able to do that, I think in this setting.
[00:39:53] Albert Cheng: Well look, you know, as a, yeah, I mean, this is great.
[00:39:55] I mean, look, as, as a, as a dad of two young boys, you know, not school aged yet, but you’re getting me thinking and reflecting on, on lots of topics, you know, we have time for one more question and I wanna give you an opportunity to maybe try to inspire us. I mean, you shared a little bit about your educational background, you know, the importance of liberal education for you.
[00:40:12] Could you talk about some of our, your, your mentors or civic heroes or heroines, and the ways in which you draw inspiration from those figures to educate boys? And presumably, I’m, I’m assuming that, you know, you want your boys to look to the, these same figures as exemplar. So why don’t you give us a few names and leave us with that.
[00:40:31] Jack Johnson Pannell: The first name is my father, Jack Johnson, who was born in 1913 in other poverty and made it to the middle class and was able to send all his children to college paying cash for the tuition. Wow. And, and I wonder how is it possible in the past century that that could happen? But we’re not able to see that today.
[00:40:55] So I care most, the core of my being is how. Do we move people into opportunity? And how do we help people find a life of purpose and meaning? It’s our national wound is we’re lost that way. I’m grateful to John Lewis. I’m grateful to an old friend who’s passed away, Rick Woolworth, who said he wanted to plant fruit on other people’s trees.
[00:41:25] That’s in my heart every single day. I came to create 20 arts prep by stripping to the studs. Everything we do in education and rebuilding what I think is a different vision for education. I recently learned that Harvard College, that its initial mission in 16 whatever, was to promote knowledge and.
[00:41:52] Godliness in young men, I’d change that to. Our mission is to promote knowledge and strong Christian character in young men, and I’m moving in that direction because I think the world is calling out for people to be. Our boys will tell you that the habits of character we care about is for them to be kind, curious, and responsible.
[00:42:21] And we live into that every single day. We fall down, we pick ourselves up, we fall down. This morning I had a discussion with a boy about his irresponsible use of his cell phone, which is another fad. You know, as some people think the magic bullet is to take cell phones away from kids in school. I say, no.
[00:42:44] What we need to do is show children how to be responsible with their cell phone. And if we can’t teach responsibility, we’re not doing our job. And so that comes under the rubric of responsibility. This young man has abused the privilege of his cell phone during the school day, and so we take it away and we reset.
[00:43:06] What does it mean to be responsible with your cell phone? It is a tool for learning. Everyone plays chess here, so we, we use our cell phones to play chess a little bit, so, so it’s a tool. Yeah, but I mean, I just wanna go back to kind, curious and responsible. Isn’t that the kind of human being you wanna be working alongside of in the future?
[00:43:26] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:43:27] Albert Cheng: Well, Jack, well said. I mean, that’s inspiring and um, yes. You know, we are so encouraged to hear of the work that’s going on in Phoenix, so thank you for being with us and
[00:43:37] Jack Johnson Pannell: yes, the ways you lead. Thank you so much for your time.
[00:43:54] Alisha Searcy: Well, that was quite inspiring, wasn’t it? I love to hear great things happening on the ground and adults making a difference for kids.
[00:44:03] Albert Cheng: Yeah, no, that’s absolutely right, Alisha. And, and just, I mean, even this whole idea of the All boys school Yes. Lots of folks out there, you know, and then the data are kind of showing it that yeah.
[00:44:12] You know, a lot of boys are getting left behind. Mm-hmm. And could this be a way to kind of help solve that problem? So yeah. Great interview.
[00:44:19] Alisha Searcy: It was, I’m a big fan of single gender schools and to your point, certainly when it comes to focusing more on boys. So before we go, it’s time for our tweet of the Week, which comes from the Pioneer Institute, and it’s an opinion piece by Pioneer’s own Jamie Gas and Charlie Chieppo highlighting that the latest MCAS results show Massachusetts student performance remains well below pre pandemic levels with little sign of recovery.
[00:44:48] That is not good news, but make sure you check out this story and read more about it. Well, Dr. Chang, as always, very good to be with you. Likewise, Alisha. Looking forward to hanging out with you again next week.
[00:45:02] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, who do we have?
[00:45:04] Alisha Searcy: We have Dr. Ana Lemke, who’s the professor and medical director of Addiction Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and she’s also author of Dopamine Nation Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
[00:45:16] So that’s gonna be a very good interview. So until then, we look forward to seeing everybody next week.
[00:45:21] Albert Cheng: All right,
[00:45:22] see you later.
[00:45:23] Alisha Searcy: Hey, this is Alisha. Thank you for listening to the Learning Curve. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we invite you to donate at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.
