Meet Bridges Author Allyn Fisher!

Cynthia wrote to us a little while back and said that teachers are curious to know more about the Bridges authors. They wonder, for instance, just who this Allyn Fisher is. So first, we'll deal with the big issues:

- I am not a guy.
- Allyn Fisher and Allyn Snider are one and the same person.
- I work at home, but I do not write in my PJ's or even my sweats. I dress like a professional every weekday to remind myself that I still have to work for a living.

Okay, now that the burning questions have been answered, let's play that old parlor game, "Two Truths and a Lie." I will tell you three things about myself. Two of them are true; the third is not. Read the three statements below, decide for yourself, and then I'll fill you in.

1. I started teaching when I was 19 with virtually no previous experience or training of any kind.
2. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, but I couldn't handle the math. Math, in fact, was my worst subject in school, especially when arithmetic turned into algebra.
3. The most rewarding part of my job is dreaming up new Calendar Grid patterns for the Number Corner.

Have you decided which of the three statements is a bald-faced lie? If you have, then read on, and I'll tell all.

I grew up in California's Central Valley--Modesto, to be exact. We moved to the East Bay Area when I was in third grade, and at that point, I really did have my heart set on becoming a doctor. By the time I headed off to college, that dream had morphed into the notion of becoming a psychologist. Somehow, people's minds seemed even more fascinating than their bodies, so I dutifully took the first year requirements (including calculus, which just about killed me off), and showed up for Psych 101 the first day of my sophomore year. I dropped the class three weeks later after we were treated to a film about the benefits of behavior modification in a modern-day mental hospital. I was already hip to Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, and wanted nothing to do with them.

What to do? I wound up taking Ed Psych instead, followed by Philosophy of Education, and found myself increasingly intrigued with the idea of teaching. But Reed College in Portland only offered an MFA for high school teachers, and I knew for sure I didn't want to work with teenagers. So, I dropped out of college, joined an alternative living/learning community, and helped start what was known at the time as an alternative "free school." I was all of 19, and along with two others out of our little group of four, had never done any teaching. The first year, I learned that given a choice, most 6-year-olds would rather play than learn to read. The second year, I started reading and visiting other schools, trying to figure things out. That was the year I discovered Robert Wirtz, the math educator who wrote Drill and Practice at the Problem Solving Level, and began to discover that math could actually be an interesting and creative subject. My students were as enthusiastic about this new approach to math as I was, and I still remember 5-year-old Ian waving his arms excitedly as he explained that the number line starts with 0, stretches into infinity, and comes back around to join itself in a gigantic circle. Wow.

Cut forward a few years. Eventually, I went back to college, got a degree in education, and started teaching "for real" at Eliot School, an early childhood center in Portland, Oregon. My principal was generous enough to support me in piloting an exciting new math program called Math Their Way. The following year, I found myself training other teachers in the district as the program became more widespread. A year or two later, I started doing summer workshops for The Math Learning Center, as well as the Center for Innovation in Education, Mary Baratta Lorton's organization. During my first major workshop out of state, I met Donna Burk, who had vastly more experience than I did, and quite a few more years in the classroom, but was a soul sister from the start.

We developed new materials, taught workshops, and eventually wrote Box It or Bag It, Math Excursions, and the Story Box books together. Through it all we both continued to teach full time, believing that we had little or nothing to say to teachers unless we were in the classroom ourselves, and knowing that our students were the inspiration for everything we did. Donna continued with kindergarten and first grade; I moved up from first grade to teach second and third. When The Math Learning Center offered us the opportunity to write Bridges, a full-fledged standards-based curriculum, we jumped at the opportunity. It took us about four years to develop and write the K-2 program, and eventually the writing pulled us both out of the classroom. After the dust settled, Donna went on to teach children and teachers around the world. I pulled back into my little shell, and left teaching and writing altogether for a few years. Eventually, the need to complete the program pulled me back in, and I've been writing full-time ever since, first Bridges Grades 4 and 5 with Anne Fischer and Raven Deerwater, and in more recent years, a host of supplemental materials designed to meet state, and now national standards.

If you've made it this far through my narrative, you've probably deduced that my last statement is the lie. While I loved writing Number Corner, and do truly have fun dreaming up new Calendar Grid patterns, the most rewarding part of my job has always been, and continues to be, working with teachers, both in person and through cyberspace. There is nothing that gives me more joy than hearing from teachers, math coaches, and district coordinators. If Bridges has the ring of authority, a lot of it comes from all the folks who read our drafts, piloted the materials, offered suggestions both minor and major for improving the work, and faithfully sent us student samples month after month. Bridges is truly the work of a very large community, one that stretches from Forks, Washington, all the way to Burlington, Vermont, and beyond to Scotland, Morocco, Zambia, Canada, and a host of places I've never been and will likely never see.

When principals ask me how they can tell if their teachers are using Bridges with fidelity, I always tell them that when the teachers start running down the halls after them, or showing up in their office just as excited as all get out about what the kids are doing in math, and how smart their students are, that's the true sign. It's a wonderful irony to me, then, that I feel exactly the same way about teachers as they do about their kids. Every time I get a note about improved test scores in a district, or kids who are excited about long division for the first time ever, or people who have come up with marvelous new ways to make Bridges their own, I think to myself, "Look what MY teachers can do! Can you believe it?!"

~Allyn