Lancaster Man Named a State Teacher of Year : Education: Job is ‘my one and only experience with love at first sight,’ ex-college dropout says.

After dropping out of college, Dick Chapleau drifted from job to job, waiting tables, punching a clock in a department store, desperately fearing that he had wasted his prospects.

It was almost by accident that the 39-year-old Lancaster man fell into teaching. From the start, the guitar-playing, doggerel-spouting teacher knew that he had found a career, calling the classroom job “my one and only experience with love at first sight.”

Now, others are saying it shows. The Palmdale High School science instructor has been named a teacher of the year in California and will represent the state in the national competition next year.

“I really feel like Cinderella. I was so lost in my life, and now here I am,” a happy Chapleau said Tuesday. “How do you describe it when you know in your heart you’re where you’re supposed to be?”

Chapleau’s “mixed past” is familiar to his students because he tells them about it while instilling real world lessons. “If I tell them, ‘You can make huge mistakes and still recover,’ that’s better than a lot of what I teach them,” he said.

Chapleau arrives on campus 90 minutes early to prepare for the day. He tutors students on school holidays and, when the campus was short on computers, he persuaded Los Alamos National Laboratory to donate them.

But students appreciate other qualities. “He’s funny, like goofy,” said Tacha Jeanty, a 15-year-old sophomore. “He’s so silly; it’s like he’s an ordinary person.”

“He acts like he’s doing it for fun, not because he has to,” Kidron Incle, a 17-year-old senior, added after Chapleau regaled the class Tuesday with more jokes than David Letterman.

Speaking of nitrates, he said: “That’s how much a hotel charges you in the evening--a night rate.” The class groaned.

He also entertained them with his guitar. “I’ve got the chemistry blues from my head down to my shoes,” he sang. “My GPA’s going from a 4.0 to somewhere around 2.”

“Everyone thinks he deserves it,” Jeanne Hicks, a 14-year-old sophomore, said of the honor.

Chapleau was a graduate student in molecular biology at Cal State Northridge when his girl dumped him and his world fell apart. He went to work waiting tables and worked at Bullock’s before he started teaching in 1987. He joined the Antelope Valley Union High School District in the fall of 1989 and now co-directs Palmdale’s medical magnet program.

Chapleau was selected the district’s teacher of the year in the spring, then became one of 12 teachers from Los Angeles County picked to compete in the state program. He was chosen one of five state teachers of the year. The national winner will be chosen in March.

Chapleau said his philosophy is to “teach from your heart, not from your mind. You can’t be a slave to your material, but you still must teach it.”

And, he added, “don’t make me sound like a hero in doing this. Every school has phenomenal teachers. If you go out there, you’ll find them.”