Hawaii's Top Teachers

Name: Gordon K.W. Wong
Age: 30
Position: Kaimiloa Elementary teacher
Education: University of Hawaii-Manoa
Pastimes: Computers, work

Wong had his fifth-grade class at Kaimiloa Elementary create a Lego World amusement park as a lesson in problem solving.

The project had Wong constructing fancy mechanical pieces out of Lego and showing them off to his class to see if anyone could top them with a more complex creation, he said.

Over the three months it took to build Lego World, the youngsters encountered obstacles. Once, Wong said, everyone was stumped over how to keep a chain link from falling off its pulley, when a student suggested taking off one link.

"She solved the problem we couldn't figure out for two or three days," he said.

Seeing a student succeed is a personal reward for Wong, but a public reward came recently as a result of Lego World. Wong was one of four Hawaii teachers awarded the 1995 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching. He flew to Washington, D.C., last week as the elementary school mathematics honoree.

The youngsters involved in the project, now sixth-graders, were thrilled.

"They saw it as playtime," Wong said. "Unfortunately, in teaching we have to incorporate some of that because we have to fight against a lot of video games now."