Here's to all the Ms. Frizzles! - personal narrative of real life teachers who inspired character in the book 'Magic School Bus'

Instructor, May-June, 1999 by Joanna Cole, Bruce Degen

Who is the most unforgettable teacher in our lives? That's easy: Ms. Frizzle - and it's not just her clothes that make her weird. She takes her kids on class trips where no class has gone before - "Inside a Hurricane," "Inside a Beehive," and "Inside the Human Body." We are often asked if our Ms. Frizzle is based on real teachers we had in school. Indeed she is.

I remember Miss Bair, my junior high school science teacher. She didn't dress like "the Friz," with symbols of the subject she was teaching all over her clothes. And, believe it or not, she never took us on even one class trip. But she carried us along with her enthusiasm for science. Every few days, a student got to do an experiment in front of the class, and I always wanted to be that student. She offered a class-room library of science books that fascinated me, and we each checked out one book a week. Maybe that's why I ended up writing science books for kids.

Bruce's favorite subject was not math! But in 10th grade, Miss Isaacs made him love geometry at the High School of Music and Art in New York City. "She was short, and she had a bun and frizzled hair that was flying all over, just like Ms. Frizzle's," Bruce recalls. "Because she wrote so many geometry proofs on the board, she had to wear a smock over her clothes. By the end of the day, she was covered with chalk dust. But her face would shine as she explained the beauty in the logic of a proof. That love for her subject made me love it, too. That was the only year I got a 93 in math. So when I was reading Joanna's first Magic School Bus manuscript and I had to picture Ms. Frizzle, Miss Isaacs instantly came to mind."

These days, when Bruce and I visit schools to talk with kids about our books, we always meet at least one person who announces proudly, "I am the Ms. Frizzle of our school." We go to her classroom, and in a real-life imitation of the Friz's hands-on approach to science, we see aquariums, plants, microscopes, beakers, and flasks - and, one time, the largest collection of hippo figurines we'd ever seen. Sometimes, in honor of our visit, people in the school dress up like the Friz, and we love to have our picture taken with them. They tell us that Ms. Frizzle has helped them make science fun, for their students and for themselves. Likely, that kind of excitement will make them unforgettable teachers, too.

Follow the bus's adventures in Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen's books and CD-ROMs (Scholastic) and on the PBS (Fox) TV show.