Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Principal Phil Schwenk in-studio to talk about his educational experiences and what ultimately led him to teach.
Leahy: Right now we’re talking with our good friend Phil Schwenk, who’s a principal with American Classical Academy, an outstanding public charter school that’s affiliated with Hillsdale College. Going to go more with the story here.
So we go back to early 1990, or so, when you were a high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You get accepted at the University of Pennsylvania, founded by our hero, Ben Franklin. We both have him as a hero.
Schwenk: Yes.
Leahy: First American. And you don’t know anything about the University of Pennsylvania?
Schwenk: Very little.
Leahy: Other than Ben Franklin was involved in its founding. And so you decide to go there.
Schwenk: I do.
Leahy: And you get to choose either nursing or engineering or the regular college, or Wharton, the business school.
Schwenk: Yes.
Leahy: Which one do you choose?
Schwenk: I went to Wharton, undergrad. I did.
Leahy: And if, you know, in the land of graduate business schools, the top ones are really Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Stanford, those are like, the top graduate business schools.
Schwenk: Absolutely.
Leahy: But you have something in common with Donald J. Trump –
Schwenk: I do.
Leahy: – who got his undergraduate degree at Wharton – asterisk, asterisk –
Schwenk: Yes.
Leahy: He spent his first two years at Fordham, I believe. So what was it like? So there you’re from Albuquerque. Did you drive from Albuquerque?
Schwenk: I did, yes, 1,112 miles.
Leahy: With your parents?
Schwenk: Actually, it was funny, because my dad is from Indiana. We went to Indiana together. From Indiana to Philly, it was all me, 18, by myself.
Leahy: Okay, so you’re from Albuquerque, which is a small town, and you drive in – and I wouldn’t call it sort of, like, super urban New Mexico. Definitely not urban. Rural. So you drive on to the University of Pennsylvania campus. It’s like, downtown Philly, isn’t it?
Schwenk: It’s in Philly. Yeah.
Leahy: This is, like, urban.
Schwenk: It is very urban, yes.
Leahy: So you’re driving in with all your worldly possessions as an 18-year-old kid.
Schwenk: I was.
Leahy: Are you thinking, what have I gotten myself into?
Schwenk: Yes, but in an exciting way, a positive way. But yes, I realized that I was in a new environment, that it would be new to me, and it would force me to grow and understand the world.
Leahy: That was a good attitude to have. Your interest in education began as an undergraduate there. You did some tutoring in West Philly, is that right?
Schwenk: That’s correct. I was part of three different tutoring projects in West Philadelphia. For those who don’t know West Philadelphia, it’s a struggling area of the city. The poverty there is pretty high.
And then the University of Pennsylvania, as a school with a lot of relatively wealthy families, the juxtaposition of the two fascinated me. I really enjoyed going to the schools in West Philly to work with the kids there.
But I also liked this idea of that there are people that are going to these communities and they’re being educated as well. So as much as I had stuff to bring to these kids, they had plenty to bring to me and help me out.
Leahy: So you’re working with these kids in the poor part of West Philly. When did you say, this is going to be my life’s work?
Schwenk: I don’t think I really understood that until after I graduated.
Leahy: Really?
Schwenk: Because I graduated Bachelor of Science in Economics. I was focused on marketing, entrepreneurship, and management, and frankly, most of my friends had gone into consulting.
Leahy: An Ivy League school where you go into consulting. My first gig, out of another Ivy League school, was with a consulting firm. I mean, that’s what you do. You don’t really produce anything, except reports. But you make pretty decent money.
Schwenk: Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I had friends that they basically, what I call go into hiding for a couple of years, make tons of money, but they’re just working ridiculous hours.
My sister was going to school in L.A. at the time, and she was about to get married, so I decided I’ll go to L.A. and spend some time with her.
Leahy: When you graduated, did you have a gig, a job?
Schwenk: No, I just went to L.A.
Leahy: And then what happened?
Schwenk: My first gig, which was for just a couple of months, I ended up working at a real estate company. I had been asked to reprocess loans.
Leahy: I can see the excitement in your eyes right now. (Low, slow voice) I’ve been asked to reprocess loans. You had a degree in economics.
Schwenk: I did, but I also had a friend that had studied education, and she was teaching in L.A.
And so I gave her a call and I said, hey, you know what? It’s been kind of a back burner but I’ve been interested in education for a while now. Do you have any teaching opportunities?
Leahy: Was there any particular moment while you’re reprocessing loans out there in L.A. when you said, I got to do something else?
Schwenk: I think it was within the first week. (Laughter) There was no passion in it.
Leahy: By the way, if you’re out there and you make a living reprocessing loans, it’s a very worthy task, but for some people, it’s just not what you want to do.
Schwenk: No, that was not my heart’s work, and I’d always been drawn to kids in education.
Leahy: So how did you get your first gig as a teacher?
Schwenk: That same woman that I was talking about actually said, why don’t you bring a résumé tomorrow, and I’ll have you meet with our principal? And literally that’s how quickly it happened. I brought in a résumé the next day.
In L.A. at that time, that would have been mid-90s, like ’95, ’96, they were giving what is called emergency credentials to teach. If you had enough coursework, which I did in history, in the social sciences, you could take on a gig to teach and then just show evidence that you were working towards certification, so I had an emergency credential.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Phil Schwenk” by Northwest Ohio Classical Academy. Background Photo “Classroom” by Wokandapix.
[Editor’s Note: American Classical Education is an advertiser in The Tennessee Star.]
