The past nine months have been a whirlwind of sorts for newly named California Teacher of the Year Lewis Chappelear. “It’s been a series of awards,” said Chappelear, a teacher at Monroe High School in North Hills. Chappelear is also IMPACT coordinator of Monroe’s School of Engineering and Design. “First, it was the LAUSD Teacher of the Year. It went on to L.A. County Teacher of the Year. Now, I am the California Teacher of the Year.” Thanks to this final honor, Chappelear will visit Washington D.C. next April as California’s nominee for the National Teacher of the Year Award. In this capacity, Chappelear, 35, will visit with the President and the First Lady. And that’s not all. “I also get to go to space camp with NASA for being one of the National Teacher of the Year representatives,” he said. “They send all of us to space camp next summer. Also, for being California Teacher of the Year, Japan hosts us for two weeks, and we get to meet Japan’s Department of Education and be kind of ambassadors.” In January, Chappelear will find out if he’s a finalist for the National Teacher of the Year Award. Whatever the outcome, he will still head to the nation’s capital in April. This is Chappelear’s first time being nominated for California Teacher of the Year. He has been an educator for eight years, the last seven at Monroe High School and the first as a juvenile hall instructor. Since the Monroe High administration nominated him for Teacher of the Year in March, Chappelear has had to endure classroom visits and interviews by officials as well as write essays about why he is deserving of the award. “It was a very thorough, intense process,” he said. “It wasn’t a popularity contest. It’s based on performance and the recommendation by the administration.” Karen Turner, assistant principal of the School of Engineering and Design at Monroe, gushed with praise for Chappelear. “He is what I would hope all teachers would strive to be,” she said. “He’s an advocate for our students. He has been there every step of the way.” Turner added that via the San Fernando Valley Aviation/Aerospace Collaborative, a consortium of business leaders, educators and other stakeholders that meets monthly at Monroe, Chappelear is responsible for helping dozens of students to obtain internships with local businesses. Guided by Chappelear, students also take college courses online and locally at California State University, Northridge; Los Angeles Valley College and Glendale Community College. In class, students work on projects related to careers and engineering, gaining such skills as how to write a resume or a business letter. In addition, Chappelear’s students routinely compete in robotics competitions. “He’s just amazing,” Turner said. “In the classroom, he holds students’ attention, and he keeps it. He goes beyond the classroom, helping them with their college careers and showing them what’s out there. He’s very deserving of the award.” Chappelear’s students feel likewise. “He gives great opportunities like the internship program that you can’t find anywhere else,” said Monroe junior German Gonzales, who has known Chappelear for a year. “He has a different teaching style. He’s very energetic. He has enthusiasm, and he has patience that a lot of other teachers don’t have.” Monroe senior Sonia Pina said that Chappelear’s classroom stands out. “It’s a fun feeling when you enter,” she said. “There are gigantic posters of planets and the view of the earth from the moon, as well as motivational posters.” The room is more spacious than typical classrooms and nearly overflowing with computers, according to Pina. “He has all of these different [software] programs and teaches us how to do these programs,” she said. Under Chappelear’s tutelage, Pina has familiarized herself with Adobe InDesign, Rhinoceros and Adobe Photoshop, to name a few programs. “The one thing that makes my [academy] different is that this is a program for all students,” Chappelear said. “It’s not a program for the elite few or a magnet program.” Chappelear knows about elite. He has engineering degrees from Boston University and Columbia University. The Kent, Ohio, native first worked as an engineer and then as a restaurateur in Toronto before entering the teaching profession. “I moved to Los Angeles in 2000 with the intention of going to UCLA and getting another degree in engineering but ended up taking a job with L.A. County in the Juvenile Hall,” he recalled. “My classroom had no books, no pencils and no paper for fear that students would harm me or each other.” Though initially intimidated, Chappelear ended up bonding with the children he encountered in Juvenile Hall. Feeling that he could make a lasting difference in the world by being a teacher, he decided to pursue the career fulltime. At Monroe, Chappelear initially taught algebra but later approached the administration about branching out into other areas, leading to his teaching electronics. After obtaining federal Perkins funding, earmarked to improve career technology education programs, Chappelear helped launch Monroe’s School of Engineering and Design in 2003. In recognition of his achievements, LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer III and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell visited Monroe High School Nov. 26. “It was the best day of my life,” Chappelear said. “I was very proud to be recognized as the teacher to represent California in the National Teacher of the Year program My students also felt like they were California’s students of the year, and I could see the pride in their faces.”
