“Instead of giving the kids information, I give them situations, and have them figure it out,” Windell said. “They ask ‘Are you going to tell us if it’s alive or not?’ and I say ‘No.’ They get excited.”

Windell started college as a physics major at Rutgers University, but stepped out for a couple years to work in an outdoor education program. A visit to Canada got her interested in the Mountain West, and she started looking for different directions in her education.

While perusing the course catalog at the University of Montana, an unplanned goof set her on her career path. She was reading about secondary education, and didn’t realize that some pages were stuck together. So it appeared that she could get a teaching degree with an emphasis in environmental studies.

That turned out not to be the case, but Windell did complete her teaching degree with a minor in mathematics. She went to work first in Belgrade, then a year in Washington, and then in Lolo for 25 years. She moved to Missoula two years ago as a science and language arts teacher.