Li Man-yun loves to share her study experiences, and has built a relationship with her students as both teacher and friend, which has made her really feel that education can be a source of joy. (Chuang kung-ju)

Students say science teacher Li Man- yun of Taipei's Peicheng Junior High is "awesome," "mysterious," and "a terrific writer." With 21 years of experience in the new and old educational environment, wave after wave of education reforms seem not to have left her floundering in the seas of Taiwan's education profession. In fact, the tides of education reform have brought her a welcome surprise.

Taking advantage of the flexibility of content allowed under the nine-year integrated curriculum, Li helped her city-bred students learn to love observing nature. From this small beginning, she also helped to improve students' performance in biology, physics, and chemistry, and managed to make her school this year's only "Green School" junior high in Taipei City.

Tall, slender, and not exactly soft-spoken, Li Man-yun makes a serious impression at first. How is it, then, that so many students admire her?

"We were born in this beautiful homeland / With riverbanks built from weeping willows / With shadows cast wide from banyan trees / In the lower reaches of the Tsuimeng Creek / This tiny patch of riverbed is my / Beautiful homeland

"Our ancestors were the courageous ones of the Devonian period / Climbing onto land because our homes had dried out / Crawling through one marsh after another / Passing through one stretch of lowland after another / ..."

This poem, "Song of the Chorus Frog," was written at her students' request for the school's poetry-reading contest in 2002. It describes the joyful but changing course of the life of an ornate chorus frog (Microhyla ornata): from losing the tail that symbolizes its happy childhood, being shocked when a Japanese creeper vine doesn't recognize it in its adult form, and beginning, at the urging of the black-crowned night heron, to learn to croak in chorus with the other frogs, to its growing big and strong and learning to sing beautifully....

The image of the chorus frog growing up by Tsuimeng Creek seems also to symbolize the traces of the lives of Li's students. Li seems like a grown-up friend, accompanying one group of young people after another through these innocent years.