Sun Journal:  I’ve heard that you’ve taught at Big Sky High School before.  How does it feel to be back?  

Mrs. Stephens:  I think it’s great being back here, I am especially excited about the science department because the people that I work with in the science department are outstanding.  And in fact, I just ran into a friend last night and he was like ‘Oh you’re teaching at Big Sky again! That’s the best department in the city!’.

Sun Journal:  Why did you decide to come back?

Mrs. Stephens:  Well I have been gone for 18 years and what I’ve been doing all that time is teaching field courses for college students. Over the last five years years my job has really turned into more of an administrative job, where a good chunk of my year was spent developing programs and a lot of paperwork.  And so I was really feeling sorry for myself and I missed teaching and I missed just being with students everyday because it’s way more fun and interesting to be with students everyday than to just sit in front of a computer.  

Sun Journal:  So did you ever considered jobs at Hellgate or Sentinel or any other job other than Big Sky? (Follow up)

Mrs. Stephens:  Well I actually applied to a job in India-and I actually got that job but then I came to my senses and realized that I probably wasn’t going to move to India!  It was a boarding school in India that my daughter had gone to and they had a really neat position there that was science and outdoor education and I got offered the job, but then my husband and I were like ‘Oh, how is that going to work?’.  But that was the only other school that I applied to.  

Sun Journal:  Is it true that you’ve done some work with environmental studies?  Can you tell me about that?

Mrs. Stephens:  Before I started teaching in the school system here I taught environmental education. One of the places, is a place maybe some people know here, it’s called the Chewonki foundation and they have a semester school program for high school juniors.  So I taught there, I also taught in Minnesota.  So I did some environmental education like sixth grade ropes courses, canoe trips, rock climbing, that kind of thing.  And then the other work that I’ve done has been a lot of field work on Red naped sap suckers… Brook trout…Westslope cutthroat trout. I’ve done herp surveys.  Herpetology is like frogs, toads, salamanders and snakes and a lot of wetland surveys for herps, particularly burail toads.  I’ve done a lot of work on searching for breeding sites on burial toads.

Sun Journal:  What do you look forward to most with your time here at Big Sky?

Mrs. Stephens:  I’m excited about working with students again and being in a place where it’s just so happy.  You can’t come in here and be in a bad mood because it’s cool, there’s people, there’s stuff going on, and it’s exciting stuff.  I look forward to getting to be with people everyday who are just cool people.

Sun Journal:  I also learned that you speak Spanish, is that true?

Mrs. Stephens:  No way.  I’m not fluent at all.  I can have really pathetic conversations in Spanish where people are speaking really slowly and not asking me a lot of hard questions.  I’ve spent probably 10, 11, maybe 12 years going to Costa Rica every winter for work.  So my husband runs the business called aerie backcountry medicine and we teach wilderness medicine and so one of the programs that I helped develop is a program that starts out in Montana and then goes to Costa Rica for a month.  And so because of that we took our kids and lived there for a month or sometimes longer, every winter for over a decade.  But I would not go so as far as to say that my spanish is excellent.  It’s not great.

Sun Journal:  When you are not teaching, what do you do in your freetime?

Mrs. Stephens:  Mountain biking. I love biking, and I’ve set some goals for myself so this year to bike 1500 miles and do 25 miles of elevation.  I also love hiking and backpacking.  I had a hip replacement, so I have a titanium hip. I used to be a runner and I was so depressed when I couldn’t run that I decided I was going to make up my own adventure race because I can’t do a triathlon because I can’t run.  So I put together my own adventure race and I did it this summer.  I had to swim across Holland lake which is two miles and then hike up to the waterfall and then kayak back across the lake. We have a big garden and we have ducks and chickens so we try to put a lot of time into cooking and food preserving.  

Sun Journal:  When you’re biking or hiking is it just in Montana or have you ever gone outside of the state?  (Follow up)

Mrs. Stephens:  Not expressly.  There’s so many things to see in Montana, I could spend the rest of my life in the Bob Marshall or the Rattlesnake for that matter and never see everything.  I tend to stay in Montana.

Sun Journal:  Where do you see yourself and your career in ten years?

Mrs. Stephens:  Here.  I’m assuming I’ll be here and my room will have more cool stuff in it, right now it’s pretty empty so I need to get more live animals in here and set up some aquariums.

Sun Journal:  How many degrees do you have?  Do you have minors or degrees in any other subjects?

Mrs. Stephens:  I have a bachelor’s degree that’s in geology and then I have a masters degree in environmental studies.  And my environmental studies degree, my master degree was here at the University of Montana.  And my primary interest there was in stream ecology and stream restoration.  

Sun Journal:  What’s one thing that a Big Sky student should know about the science department?

Mrs. Stephens:  Ooh, can it only be one thing?  I would say it’s highly professional and it’s cutting edge.  Those would be two things, highly professional and cutting edge.  

Sun Journal:  What are some experiences that led you to become a teacher?

Mrs. Stephens:  Oh I literally decided while I was in college.  I don’t know! I mean that was so long ago, literally, I was 20 and I was like that’s what I want to do.  I guess I would answer it this way, when I finished college and I had my teaching certification, I didn’t go straight to teaching into a classroom.  I went and taught outdoors so all of my teaching experience before I came to Big Sky the first time was outdoor education and so ya know, camping and hiking, canoeing.  I did really long canoe trips in Maine and on the coast and inland with people.  And also did trail work, so I was a trail work leader for the student conservation association and so those experiences affected how I teach and they affected the fact that I want to take people outdoors and we do a lot of field trips and ya know, outdoor learning.  But I mean, I don’t know the original reason why I decided to be a teacher.