Steve began his teaching career in 1968. From 1973-76, he attended UCLA full-time and earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology, specializing in learning and instruction. He then returned to the classroom in Santa Monica, California, and has been teaching middle school mathematics there ever since.

Janis began her teaching career in 1972, teaching 6th grade in an elementary school. After a year, however, she became a middle school math teacher in Santa Monica, then five years later a high school math teacher at Santa Monica High School.

Steve and Janis Marcy published Mathimagination in 1973. This book introduced the use of self-correcting puzzles to provide practice for topics across the middle school math curriculum. Mathimagination was followed in the 1970's and 1980's with the three "Pizzazz" books: Middle School Math with Pizzazz, Pre-Algebra with Pizzazz, and Algebra with Pizzazz. The three Pizzazz books are now sold by Wright Group/McGraw Hill which owns the Creative Publications trademark.

In 1996, Steve and Janis self-published Punchline Problem Solving. For the first time, puzzles specifically for cooperative groups were included along with puzzles for individual students. They were designed so that each member of the group must complete his or her part of the puzzle in order to get the punchline.In order to encourage helping and discourage copying, students do essentially the same exercises but with different numbers (and answers). As the title implies, this book focuses on problem solving as it arises across the middle school math curriculum. The book is intended as a companion for Middle School Math With Pizzazz.

In 2002, Steve and Janis published Punchline Bridge to Algebra . This is a comprehensive set of puzzles for virtually all the objectives in today's pre-algebra and beginning algebra programs. While the puzzles are mostly for individual students, there are also 10 puzzles for partners to work on together.

Steve and Janis have recently published Punchline Algebra containing nearly 300 puzzles in two binders. Puzzles are provided for nearly every topic in today's Algebra 1 textbooks, with an emphasis on problem solving and on modeling real-world situations with equations, tables, and graphs.

We hope you'll have an opportunity to try our new books, and also that you'll visit our website again as it grows. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Thanks for your support.