Lancaster Teacher Wins Milken Award : Education: Dick Chapleau describes teaching as ‘the best job in the world.’ He is one of 150 to receive a $25,000 grant.

His life a mess, Dick Chapleau quit Cal State Northridge midway through a master’s degree.

His girlfriend had dumped him. He was smoking too much pot. He couldn’t study and ended up as a waiter at a San Fernando Valley coffee shop.

Two years later, his luck changed. He met his future wife, returned to school, quit drugs, became an electrician and, finally, a teacher at Lancaster High School.

On Thursday, surrounded by hundreds of students--as well as his wife and children--Chapleau got lucky again, winning $25,000 in recognition of his nine-year teaching career.

Representatives of the Milken Family Foundation, which this year surprised 150 teachers and principals nationwide with no-strings-attached cash prizes, declared Chapleau a winner Thursday at an assembly in the school gym.

Stunned and teary-eyed, Chapleau sat in the bleachers for several minutes without moving. He covered his face with his hands then slowly approached Lowell Milken, president of the foundation.

“This is going to be the only time you ever see me speechless,” Chapleau told the cheering students and faculty. “This is the best job in the world. This is the most important job in the world.”

A few minutes later, Chapleau was back in Room 212, teaching science to 35 ninth-graders, with photographers capturing his every move and his family sitting in the back of the class. Even the school board president stopped by.

Slowly, most of the outsiders left Chapleau alone to explain energy and matter, a lesson sprinkled with quotes from Einstein, Newton and his mother.

“I’m so completely at peace in the classroom,” he said later. “I’m home.”

His remarkable skill is an ability to transfix teen-agers with science talk. Students, dressed in their school’s red, white and blue uniforms, laughed at his jokes, took notes and good-naturedly yelled “Attaboy!” when a fellow student correctly answered a question.

Wearing his trademark white lab coat over a red T-shirt, Chapleau wove his way through the desks and tables, shifting easily between jokes and science.

After his lecture, Chapleau declared a “talk break,” giving the students a chance to gab among themselves. Then, he said, he would play a song on his guitar and they could go on to their next class.

Not your typical ninth-grade science class.

“He makes it fun to learn,” said Mitchell Mehood, 13. Others agreed that Chapleau is cool and never boring.

To explain changes in volume, Chapleau suggested using common household items, such as a cat and a bathtub.

“If you were to put a cat in a bathtub, would the water go up? Yes,” he said, grinning. “By the way, anyone got a cat they could bring in?”

The students roared.

His children, Christopher, 17, Richard, 12, and Jeanette, 11, giggled in the back row. But they really broke up when Chapleau said he woke up at 3 a.m.--his wife curled up against his back like a spoon--and thought about his science lecture for the day.

His wife, blushing slightly, said Chapleau is in his element in the classroom. When he was an electrician, Lisa Chapleau said, he would wake up grumpy every day. Now, she said, “he can’t wait to get to school.”

Chapleau also was honored as this year’s California Teacher of the Year. He helped established the medical magnet school at Palmdale High School, going door to door for donations. The magnet has grown from a single class in 1991 to an enrollment this year of more than 400.

The Milken award, he said, was really special, adding that he has no idea how he will spend the money.

Milken, whose brother Michael was the junk bond king jailed for securities fraud, had never met Chapleau before he gave the check to him Thursday morning. The state’s five winning teachers were nominated in secret by district officials and were selected by a panel and the state Department of Education.

But Milken said he knew what kind of teacher Chapleau would be.

“You can see how committed he is,” Milken said.