Tamara Fisher Alley is the K-12 Gifted Education Specialist (teacher and coordinator) for the
Polson School District, located on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. She
earned her Master of Arts degree in Educational Psychology with a concentration in Giftedness,
Creativity, and Talent Development from the University of Connecticut in 2004. She is Co-Director of Edufest, the northwest’s premiere conference on gifted and talented education, as well as a Past President of the Montana Association for Gifted and Talented Education (Montana AGATE). Fisher Alley’s experiences working with K-12 gifted students appear in Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and Their Teachers, which she co-authored with Karen Isaacson. Fisher Alley’s writing also appeared for six years at the Education Week Teacher website where she blogged about gifted education in her “Unwrapping the Gifted” blog. “Unwrapping the Gifted” is now re-animated as a column in the National Association for Gifted Children’s Teaching for High Potential magazine. She has presented on gifted-related topics for local, county, tribal, state, regional, national, and international audiences, including teachers, parents, students, administrators, pre-service teachers, and the general public. Fisher Alley was selected as the 2001 Polson Teacher of the Year and the 2013 Montana AGATE Educator of the Year.