Hawaii's Top Teachers

Name: Marcy Frenz
Age: 45
Position: Science teacher, Waiakea Elementary
Education: U. Oregon, Chaminade, UH-Manoa.
Pastime: Hiking Mauna Loa

She doesn't just race cars in her spare time. She builds them.

So it's no surprise that she doesn't just teach science. She has kids build things.

She starts with odds and ends.

"Instead of buying something brand new, we can build it, even if it doesn't look as fancy as brand new," she tells kids.

They learn they can make their project look pretty later on.

One example is a project her second-grade class did on the refraction of light. They got mirrors and lights, and watched where the beams went.

"It can travel," she said.

Some fifth-grade boys wanted to build model "hydraulic" cars. Frenz knew they were misusing the word, but she let them go ahead.

Their experiment failed, but they learned scientists often don't get what they expected.

A quiet third-grade girl mentioned rabbits to Frenz once, said Waiakea Principal Janice Jenner.

Later Frenz discovered a question about rabbits on the Internet.

She told the girl she didn't know the answer but maybe the girl could find it. The girl has been using the Internet since.

"It's her," Jenner said. "Kids just learn her, the way she deals with life."