L.A. educator among state's best

For someone who never thought of becoming a teacher, Lewis Chappelear hasn't done all that badly.

Not too badly at all.

Eight years ago, Chappelear was a burnt-out, unsatisfied restaurant owner in Toronto in search of a change.

On Monday, he will be named a California Teacher of the Year with four others and represent California in a national top-teacher competition.

He has taught math to youths in juvenile hall and worked at Compton High School. When he grew restless teaching algebra at Monroe High School in North Hills, he launched an engineering program. And when the school couldn't afford to pay for supplies to enter a robotics competition, he put up $5,000 of his own money.

"It is all about the kids," he said, bringing real meaning to a favorite phrase of school board members, union officials and school bureaucrats.

Chappelear, a former engineer with two graduate degrees, said he had a vague idea that he wanted to get back to science, but no plan. On a frigid New Year's Eve in 1999, he resolved to move to Los Angeles.

By the end of the next month, he had made the move. Before leaving, Chappelear had scanned the Internet looking for a job to hold him over until he could enroll at UCLA to earn yet another degree. He had come across a posting to teach troubled students at a juvenile detention facility in L.A. County.

He called. They offered him the job over the phone.

Chappelear remembers his first day on the job, walking through security gates and into a drab classroom with no books, no paper, no pencils, no pens.

"They were afraid the kids would use them as weapons," he said. "I thought to myself, 'Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? I have no idea what I am doing. This is going to be terrible.' It turned out to be the best day of my life. The kids were amazing. That's when I knew what I was supposed to be doing with my life."

The teaching award by the state Department of Education, which Chappelear shares with four other California educators, credits his work at Monroe High, which, like so many other campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District, faces the challenges of serving thousands of poor, minority students.

In the fall of 2001, after various teaching positions, he landed at a school closer to his San Fernando Valley home. At Monroe, he was assigned to teach algebra but still wanted to teach something closer to his own engineering background. He nagged and pleaded with school administrators, who relented the next year and added a single electronics class to his course load.