His Story
Gary Koppelman has taught fifth grade at Blissfield Community Schools in Michigan for forty years, and his colleagues call his classroom “WOW,” for “World of Wonder.” Beside it is a climate-controlled greenhouse, the Blissfield Environmental Life Lab, or BELL, which he spearheaded in 1998. It holds a rainforest biome, a 1,200-gallon freshwater stream and pond, a 1,000-gallon salt-water ecosystem, a bird aviary, a reptile area and an “invertebrate zoo.” Students serve as “Zookeepers” who feed and care for the animals.
Students there watch a butterfly’s full life cycle, see a tarantula shed its exoskeleton and use a microscope and monitor to watch blood circulate in a transparent tadpole. They run “The Rodent Runoff,” comparing hamsters, gerbils and mice in rodent race cars, and they chart the data. A thousand miles from an ocean, they discover that salt-water fish swim differently from fresh-water fish. He says that crossing the threshold of the BELL turns students into “botanists, oceanographers, explorers, inventors, mathematicians, writers, artists, and so much more.”
His former principal says “each year as MEAP scores come out, Blissfield’s K-5 science scores will be tops in the county,” and a college professor reports that science scores rose 12 to 17 percent after the BELL opened. Former students have gone into medicine, research, biology, chemistry, agriculture and environmental work.
Beyond the Classroom
Koppelman chairs the elementary science curriculum and has written four volumes of “WOW Activities for Elementary Classrooms.” He leads county workshops on Common Core science and helped bring an online K-12 curriculum site to a three-county area of southeastern Michigan. He works with Adrian College and Siena Heights University, giving workshops for future teachers, and a professor takes her elementary methods class to his room every semester.
He started the school’s Outdoor Educational Program, in which more than 98 percent of fifth graders take part and high school students, many of them his former students, serve as cabin leaders. His fifth graders grow plants for urns that beautify downtown Blissfield, and he has taken part in a butterfly habitat restoration project and a zoo education think tank. He received the 2013 Shell Science Teaching Award from the National Science Teachers Association.
Philosophy Into Practice
Koppelman believes in a “hands-on, minds-on” approach, and that “excellent teachers approach their pedagogy by allowing students to explore learning first hand.” He says his dream, planted by his own fifth grade teacher, was to “touch children with a nature center.”
He asks teachers to remain lifelong learners “never with an attitude of arriving,” and he credits parents, the board, volunteers, service clubs and local businesses for making the BELL possible: “It does take a community to educate a child.” As a remedy for educational problems he points to the move from STEM to STEAM, arguing that arts education is “a key to creativity.”
“The art of teaching is creative, teachers always developing and growing.”— Gary Koppelman
In His Own Words
“My classroom reflects a community.”— Gary Koppelman
“I firmly believe in “hands-on, minds-on” approach to teaching and experiential learning.”— Gary Koppelman
“Arts education is a key to creativity.”— Gary Koppelman
What Others Said
“Gary Koppelman has inspired thousands of students and teachers during 41 years of teaching.”— Deborah Cornelison, nominator and 2013 NTHF inductee
“Mr. Gary Koppelman is a master teacher and definitely worthy of recommendation to the National Teachers Hall of Fame!”— Dee Crane, former principal, Blissfield Elementary
“Mr. Koppelman’s fifth grade students consistently rank amongst the highest in Lenawee County.”— Scott D. Moellenberndt, Superintendent, Blissfield Community Schools
“He certainly believes in his students and makes them believe in themselves.”— Jodi (Jackson) Sterle, former student and Iowa State University professor
“Mr. Gary Koppelman has had an immeasurable positive impact on his students, school, and our small community of Blissfield, Michigan.”— Andrea R. Milner, Ph.D., Adrian College