May 11, 2009
 
Having fun helps Charter teacher win award
Gupta's enthusiasm, entertainment rule
By EDWARD L. KENNEY
The News Journal
 
If there were any doubts that a good teacher is often a talented entertainer, they have been wiped away like an eraser on a chalkboard by Beenu Gupta, who teaches biology at the Charter School of Wilmington.
 
"She has a very unorthodox teaching style," said Donna Urban, the director of professional development at the school who successfully nominated Gupta for the 2009 Life Sciences Educator Award. "It's very outgoing, very loud, very passionate, very humorous. She engages students in an incredible way that brings out their potential and makes them excel at the highest level."
 
Gupta, 51, of Hockessin, said she is not shy about performing in class, especially if that effort leaves a lasting impression. She has a background in drama during her school days in India, before moving in 1983 to this country.
 
"I sing and dance all the time in the classroom, so the kids have an interesting hour, and learning can be fun for them," she said. "I throw candy at them. I give them rewards. Basically, kids just love the class."
 
Rebecca Roelofs, 17, a senior at the school, can testify to the crowd-pleasing antics. Roelofs was selected as one of two students to represent Delaware in the Presidential Scholars program earlier this month, and she cited Gupta as a major influence on her schoolwork.
 
"Just the way she teaches," Roelofs said, "it's a way that will make biology stick with me for the rest of my life. Did you hear about the amino acid dance she does? She gets the whole class to do the dance. You get into it in the classroom. It's a good environment."
 
Gupta must be doing something right. She was one of four educators to win the Life Sciences Award nationwide, and she and Urban went to Washington, D.C., April 30 for the ceremony. The award includes a $10,000 prize, but the money was secondary to Gupta, who said she is married to a physician and does not really need it. She views the prize more as a validation of the work she is doing.
 
"I love teaching," she said. "I love interacting with these kids. And the more they learn, the more excited I get."
 
And she is not alone, she said.
 
"There are many, many bright and extremely hard-working teachers that don't get the credit," Gupta said. "There are a lot of passionate teachers like me, I'm sure. Whatever job I do, I have to have a perfection in it. So we work and we work. I tell my students all the time there is no exception for hard work. And I'm blessed that these kids are very motivated to work, too."
 
The students are part of a school that also has been recognized nationally. In 2008, U.S. News and World Report ranked Charter 41st among high schools nationwide.
 
Gupta, who has taught at the school since it was founded in 1996 and for two years before that as a teacher at two previous schools in the same building, can take a lot of the credit for helping to make the charter school what it is, especially in the sciences department.
 
"I am the one who started Science Fair and fought for it," she said. "I am the lead coach for Science Olympiad. I started Science of the Mind in this school. I just like the kids to be busy and to maximize their potential."
 
Gupta also moderates the school's Envirothon teams, which have been state champions for 10 years. Last year, a team placed first in the nation at the Canon Envirothon. Not to be outdone, her Science Olympiad teams have won state championships for eight years, and a team finished third in the nation last year.
 
Gupta, who earned a master's in zoology from Lucknow University in India, said she likes to teach by making useful and meaningful connections to a fact, giving a reason for its existence rather than letting it hang like an abstract thing all by itself.
 
"I am very much model-oriented," she said. "I make the students make models so they can see through the concept. Once they make the models, they never forget."
 
If her colorful classroom antics are an indication, it's a safe bet they won't forget Gupta, either.