CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.
With his close-cropped sandy hair, slight
build and dark conservative suit, Michael Penrod looked like an
evangelist. His eyes blazed with intensity as he spoke to the crowd of
more than 200 late last month. His voice rose and fell with cadences
learned, he said, at his preacher father’s knee.
But the young man wasn’t an evangelist. He had just been named
“Teacher of the Year” by SECME – the Science, Engineering,
Communications, Mathematics Enrichment program, celebrating its
twenty-first year of teacher training at a summer institute at the
University of Virginia.
And the story Penrod was telling to a rapt audience of teachers,
principals, administrators, and university and industry officials was
the teacher’s version of the conversion tale – a young man snatched
from the brink of dropping out of school.
“And he came to my door, that young man who’d been in my dropout
prevention class two years ago, and he smiled at me,” Penrod said, as
he wound toward the conclusion of his tale “‘Hello, Mr. Penrod, I’m
back,’ he said. ‘Are we going to build mousetrap cars this year?’
“And I said, ‘Yes, we would.’
“‘Will we do the egg drop this year – and bridge building and the lunar colony, too?’ he asked.
