'Mr. MPA': Thomas Malcolm Retires After 40 Years At Morgan Park Academy

CHICAGO, IL -- Most people have had a teacher in their lives that has stood out as unforgettable. For anyone who attended Morgan Park Academy on Chicago’s South Side for their middle school years over the past four decades, Thomas Malcolm is that teacher.

For 41 years, Malcolm has been a consistent backbone for the school. His knowledge of science is limitless, but it is how he treats every student with respect that most of his former students and colleagues remember most about him. His passion and dedication for the school is unmatched. The life lessons he gave generations of students has had an untraceable impact on the world.

“He is Mr. MPA,” said Morgan Park Academy Head of School Mercedes Z. Sheppard, who has worked alongside Malcolm at MPA for the past 21 years as a teacher and administrator. “Mr. Malcolm’s service and dedication to MPA has been unwavering.”

A few months before the end of this school year, Malcolm announced that 2016-17 would be his last at MPA. He will retire after the June 10 Upper School Commencement and relocate to a farm he recently purchased in Walkerton, Indiana.

“Life really does come full circle,” said Malcolm, who grew up on a farm in Elkhart, Indiana.

When seventh and eighth graders at MPA walked into Malcolm’s class (Room 212 in Hansen Hall for years) for the first time, they knew they weren’t in for the typical middle school science class experience. It was the life lessons students would take away more than the education in science.

“I always tell kids that sometimes they don’t realize that they all have an impact on other people and that hopefully that is a positive impact,” Malcolm said. Too many people live for themselves and sometimes that collusion is extremely difficult. They really need to think about how they are affecting other people and what we are all doing to give back to society. That’s the reason we are on this planet… it’s to give back to other people.”

Malcolm’s words were taught by example.

“He sets a tremendous example of selflessness for our students, faculty and staff,” Sheppard said. “We know him as a science teacher and director of student life, but those are just his official titles. Most of us also know him as the person who ensures that our American flag is hung and stored appropriately every day, the person who maintains the school garden, a cheerleader for every sporting event, a champion for every student, and most important, the keeper of our mission and vision here at Morgan Park Academy.”

The 41-year run Malcolm has put together at MPA began with him applying to become a biology teacher for the Upper School. He did not get the position because the school was looking for someone to double as a dean, but did offer him an opening in the Middle School. He accepted, and has been teaching seventh and eighth graders at the school ever since.

Malcolm has been a consistent fan at the school’s home sporting events, was involved with MPA field day events and helped bring about the school’s advisory program that’s been used as a model at several other private institutions. His involvement eventually earned him the job as Middle School Head Teacher and later Dean of Student Life.

Middle School Principal Heather Kurut says she doesn’t if there is anything she won’t miss about Mr. Malcolm.

“He’s the first person to thank someone for something they’ve done,” she said. “He will write a thank you note to someone helping immediately after an event. I’ll be forever thankful for having the privilege of working with him.”

Kurut says Malcolm loved Morgan Park Academy “more than anyone” she’s ever met and that no one “works harder” to make sure everything runs smoothly.

“That means everything from working admissions at events to checking bathrooms,” she said.

It was Kurut who in recent years would accompany Malcolm as a co-chaperone on the eighth grade class’ annual spring trip to Washington, D.C. One memory sticks out in particular as evidence of Malcolm’s unique ability to jump into action at a moments notice for the betterment of his students.

Kurut remembers one class returning home on a bus from Midway Airport around 11 p.m. and a couple of teenagers on Cicero Avenue throwing a rock and smashing a window on the bus. Within minutes, TV crews showed up with cameras and the students needed to disembark from the damaged bus to another that arrived.

“So Mr. Malcolm tells all the kids they need to go incognito,” Kurut remembers. “He finds a bunch of folders for the kids to use to shield their faces and some sunglasses to cover their eyes. This after a trip filled with direction to students that they not wear sunglasses on the bus in Washington, D.C.”

Malcolm was a chaperone on the D.C. trip for 28 years, and each trip was commemorated with a professional group photo from the steps in front of the U.S. Capitol building. When the photo was printed, Malcolm stapled it to a wall in his classroom. That wall of photos was direct evidence of Malcolm’s uncanny memory.

A memory that includes the names of every single student pictured, in every single year. Not only could Malcolm give you the name of every student he taught from decades past, but unique aspects about them as well.

He remembers walking into the 7-Eleven store at 103rd and Western and spotting a police officer waiting in line. He was only a student of Malcolm’s for a few months at MPA years before.

“I went up to him and said ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I remember you. He did, though,” Malcolm said. “You put together the kids with the face and with the activities that come from this room.”

Malcolm began his teaching career at Central Noble High School, a public high school in Albion, Indiana. He was only there for a short time, but his impact there still resonates more than 40 years later.

He was invited by the CNHS Class of 1976 for their 40th reunion last year but was not able to attend and also was invited by the Class of 1977 for their 40th reunion next fall. He plans to attend that one.

“It’s an honor to be asked,” Malcolm said.

MPA held a retirement party for Malcolm with several former students present in May. A separate event from his new farm in Indiana was held in early June.
A video tribute was made by co-workers and students from all through the decades.

Thank You, Mr. Malcolm from Morgan Park Academy on Vimeo.

The school has honored him in many ways, from inducting him into the Hall of Fame two years ago to adding a “Malcolm House” to the school’s house system to naming the school’s Volunteer of the Year award after him.

But it’s his beloved classroom and personal quirks that many students, this reporter included, will remember the most.

“You learn more from something you got wrong rather than something you got right.” “You don’t have two questions, you have one question. It’s impossible to be thinking two things at one time.” Those are some of the lines he repeated in class numerous times. And lessons students have taken with them into adult life.

His old, never-washed coffee mug commemorating the 1959 Chicago White Sox season. Always having an animal in class. Instructing students not to use cups, but rather their bare hands when going to the sink for a drink of water. Those are some of the random things students remember.

He was also known for his talent when it came to gardening. When he lived in the house one door east of the campus for 21 years, he would often take students there on a nice day to display his robust garden. A garden packed with hostas, daylilies and four complete sections of plants. He would often name his plants, “August Moon” being one, but not his pets. One of his cats was just called “Cat.” A black cat what called “Big Black” and there were others like “Little Boy” and “Little Girl.” His fish were referred to as “Fish.”

Malcolm would tell every class that he was 93 years old. Some actually believed him. But in his final year, he told the 2017 group of eighth graders that he is 68. Which he actually is.

He taught every student in his classroom the proper way to fold the American flag. After all, that (voluntarily) became his job day in and day out. During the day, the flag would be atop one of the tallest flagpoles on the South Side and at the end of the day folded properly by Malcolm and returned to sit in his classroom overnight.

While Malcolm says there isn’t too much emotion upon his retirement because heading back to a farm in Indiana was “the plan the whole time,” he says he will miss all the other teachers he’s worked with at MPA over the years.

“I have been very lucky to have worked with the people here,” he said. “(Former Principal) Winnie (Theodore) was able to surround herself with good people and gave the opportunity the ability to take a chance. She and (Former MPA Headmaster) Mr. (David) Jones went out on a limb to give people a chance.”

He says Peggy Scolan, Emily Drown, Doc Brown, Martin Wolf and Tony Churchill are the kind of teachers he would have loved to have had.

“If I could choose people to teach me, those are the teachers I would have liked to have,” he said. Malcolm named other teachers and administrators who have had a positive impact on his career at MPA in his most recent teacher biography.

“When I think of MPA and what it stands for, summarized by the words, Be kind and do your best, I think immediately of Mr. Malcolm,” said Churchill, a retired social studies teacher and coach who spent decades working with Malcolm in the Middle School at MPA. “He epitomizes those words. He not only touched the lives of his students but his colleagues as well. I am a better person today because he is my friend.”

Malcolm says he hopes the most important lesson he has passed on the students is that “actions have consequences.”

He remembers hearing about three of his former students landing in trouble after deciding to throw a rock over an overpass and injure members of a family in a car.

“Those were good kids who made a poor choice and had to deal with the consequences,” he said. “I believe they learned the consequences of their action.”

There’s many a time Malcolm remembers where he thought he would have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Although it was always well-intentioned and for the betterment of the school somehow, Malcolm said there were a few times over his four decades at the school in which he believed he would be fired.

“One time I cut down all the scrub trees on the property because I didn’t like them and Mr. Jones called me into his office asking me what I was thinking.”

He was thinking about the school and, being the avid gardener, the upkeep of the property. It was Malcolm who for years would clean up the campus. It’s just something he did.

MPA will have big shoes to fill considering everything Malcolm did there on a consistent basis for years. But he says one of the reasons why he is at ease with retirement now is that the school is in good hands.

“I am not concerned about leaving at all,” Malcolm said, crediting parents for making “significant sacrifices” to keep the institution moving forward. “The school is in good hands, and I’m leaving with the understanding that it will grow and change.”

He’s says it’s time to live for himself.

“I only have a certain number of years left that can include physical labor,” he said. “I want to be on the farm and that is going to be physical labor.”

But looking back at MPA, the memories of kids “learning how to learn” is what is never going to go away.

“They have taken the challenges we have given them,” he said. “We did project-based learning and it was all hands on. Learning how to learn. That’s something you can take and use it in your world no matter what changes come about.”

Photos courtesy of Morgan Park Academy