From Fire and Smoke, the Spark of Learning

By Tracey Wong Briggs

This is part of an occasional series on members of the

2005 All-USA Teacher Team, USA TODAY’s recognition

program for outstanding K-12 teachers. Winners share $2,500 awards with their schools.

To nominate a teacher for the 2006 team, visit allstars.usatoday.com.

WEIRTON, W.Va. — The scorched ceiling tiles and chipped light fixtures in Pete Karpyk’s room are testament to the chemistry teacher’s explosive approach.

Room G-504 at Weir High is a place where plastic bottles turn into rockets, soap bubbles flame and explode, students get shrink-wrapped in trash bags, and liquid nitrogen turns cream and sugar into ice cream.

“It’s nothing like what I expected,” says Advanced Placement chemistry student Chris Tsekouras, 17. “I expected it to be a lot of equations. It ended up being a lot of explosions.”

For Karpyk, 55, the bangs and flames are merely catalysts for turning kids on to chemistry.

In a town that has lost thousands of steel mill jobs during the 28 years he has taught at Weir High, Karpyk has to prepare students for a life beyond Weirton’s borders. He has inspired more than a generation of students to appreciate science and enjoy learning.

So successful is Karpyk that West Virginia University chemistry professor Robert Nakon would automatically seat the Weir High grads in the front row of his large lectures.

“He did a lot for my class, because I always had a certain group of students I could count on to answer questions correctly or almost correctly,” Nakon says.

Nakon, who is retired now, met Karpyk only once, but he always appreciated the enthusiasm of the Weir High grads he inevitably had for chemistry, a subject so many other students feared.

“By being so enthusiastic and outgoing, it induces a sort of attitude toward learning that’s not always easy to instill,” Nakon says.

Karpyk’s own love of learning was forged in the Steel Belt.

An immigrant of Ukrainian descent, Karpyk came to the USA at age 4 and spoke no English. His parents had escaped Germany after World War II and eventually settled in the steel town of Warren, Ohio.

Early language difficulties set the tone for Karpyk in the classroom, but his father assumed that the labor unions would offer his son the security that had given the family a foothold on the American Dream.

“I did work in the mill. In high school, I worked the midnight shift and barely graduated,” Karpyk says. “I didn’t like it, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

As a kid, Karpyk loved the science TV show Mr. Wizard and set up a home chemistry lab in the basement. He finally found his motivation as a chemistry student at Youngstown College.

His future fell into place shortly after graduation, when his wife, Nancy, an elementary school teacher, asked him to help tutor her students.

Karpyk discovered that he enjoyed working with children and he had a knack for connecting activities they love with the concepts they have to learn.

“You teach the way you wish you’d been taught,” says Nancy, Karpyk’s wife of 32 years.

Karpyk’s introductory classes average more than 30 students and keep him squeezing dollars and writing grants for supplies, but he refuses to limit enrollment.

His demos are so popular that they have earned him a Mr. Wizard-like gig on KidzNews, a statewide TV show.

But the explosions are just one way Karpyk brings the chemistry to students’ level.

His classes are challenging, but the tests seem like worksheets because he covers the material so well, Tsekouras says.

“Eventually, it is a lot of equations, but they’re equations you can see,” he says. “He just sits down and sees where you’re at. And wherever you’re at, he can help.”

Personally unassuming, Karpyk is the kind of teacher former students call for help with their college chemistry homework because they know how much he wants them to understand it. He, in turn, values their feedback.

He even uses questions from their college tests as bonus questions in his classes, crediting the college and the student. Among the names students see are those of older siblings and family friends, doctors, nurses and engineers.

Students come in with a wide range of math skills, and all don’t do well on tests, so Karpyk tries to come up with as many ways as he can to help them succeed.

Each year, he takes students to elementary schools to give chemistry demonstrations and finds many who don’t test well thrive when teaching the concepts to students.

Beyond teaching chemistry, lab skills and problem-solving, Karpyk works hard to develop a good attitude about chemistry and learning.

“If they have a good attitude, they’re more likely to succeed than if they have good skills,” he says.

Karpyk, whose enthusiasm for chemistry and for students infuses each class, knows from experience. His own late-blooming past motivates him to try to reach every single one: “You can’t ever shut the door on a student.”

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.