Mr. Chapin Bio

Mr. Chapin is in his 31st year of teaching in SW Minnesota. 

I started my teaching career in Mountain Lake in 1995. I taught HS health education and physical education in grades K-10. After 4 years there, I moved to Mankato and taught 8th-grade physical education and health education for 1 year.  I then moved a little closer to home by teaching in Lake Crystal for 1.5 years. I taught HS health and physical education for LCWM. In January of 2002, I started teaching in St. James. It was a great move for me and also for my family.

I have a passion for the health of the young people in our community. I am currently working on improvements to our health curriculum to continue to reduce the pregnancy rate of the young people in our community. I am also working hard to promote activities for our young people that are drug and alcohol-free. We need to provide more for young people in this community to do when they are not in school.

In 2023, I had the incredible opportunity to adjunct teach a Health Methods class through MSU - Mankato.  This was the best PD I have ever done for myself and the students in my class gave me a new passion due to their energy, professionalism, and passion for our careers! have made a push to build a strong technology background into my teaching.  I have also been an adjunct faculty instructor at St. Mary's University, teaching EDMA 637: Integrating Technology Into the Curriculum.  I teach a video production course and a course for middle school entitled Google 101 - an intro to Chromebook use and teaching students to be more creative in their assignment production.  I am also teaching a college-level class at MSU Mankato, KSP 150: Exploring Careers in Education.

My wife, Michele, and I moved to St. James from Butterfield in September of 2004. We have 2 children - Danielle 25(4th Grade Teacher - Baltic, SD) and Tyler 22 (Physical Therapy Graduate Student - Creighton University - Omaha, NE). We love doing family activities. We have found ourselves chasing our children around to different sporting events as well as planning large trips to experience different parts of the Americas.  We look forward to continuing this passion.