News
Teacher goes outside for biology and dollars
Most people see a tidy stretch of landscaping newly planted in the long concrete planters flanking
the south entrance to Flathead High School.
Lori Ortley sees an outdoor native plant laboratory.
By Candace Chase
The Daily Inter Lake
"I’m hoping to get an underground sprinkler system put in," Ortley said as she hauled a hose
along her plant lab. "Otherwise, it’s me."
A biology teacher at Flathead High School, Ortley will nurture her students’ handiwork throughout
the summer. She can’t wait for the plants to thrive and benefit battalions of biology students in
coming years.
When it comes to teaching biology, Ortley thinks outside the schoolroom walls for innovative
projects and for the dollars to make them happen.
The biology teacher has racked up an impressive record in the competitive grant-writing game.
She credits her success to joining community resources together with Flathead’s spectrum of
science teaching talent.
"We have some incredible people," Ortley said. "Our department head, Todd Morstein, is the
Montana chemistry teacher of the year."
Just this week, Ortley received word her grant application to the Plum Creek Foundation for
$2,000 had been approved. She expects to buy about 10 more Global Positioning System
instruments for forestry studies.
"It really makes sense for them to support us," Ortley said. "If you log it all gone, you’re out of
work."
The teacher goes full time for the first time next year. She laughed and related that her son was
incredulous to find out she hasn’t been full time all along.
While her four children might express surprise to hear it, Ortley said family comes before career.
After growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Ortley attended the University of North Iowa. While in
school, she didn’t have an clear-cut career goal, but knew she wanted to stay involved in science.
She gravitated naturally into teaching.
"I taught swimming when I was in high school so I had been teaching for a long time and I liked
it," Ortley said.
After she met and married her husband, David, family became her focus for quite a few years. The
two were expecting their fourth child in 1989 when they decided to look out West for a new home.
Ortley explained her husband was at a critical point in his law career where he had to decide
whether to become part of a large law firm or go another direction.
The couple chose a new direction and went west to Kalispell where David Ortley now serves as a
justice of the peace. They arrived in the state in time to have their fourth child, Bailey, a Montana
native.
While her children attended rural schools, Ortley substitute taught in the valley. She taught for
several teachers on maternity leave before she began her part-time position with her own class
five years ago.
Making the transition from housewife to science teacher, she found keeping up to date with
technology posed a major challenge.
"I’m no techno-wizard," she said. "The kids learn that stuff far faster. They grew up with
GameBoys."
Technology plays a central role in her teaching approach that emphasizes getting the students
into the fields and forests.
"That’s where biology is," she said.
When she worked out of the HER Vocational-Agricultural Center, Ortley and Lisa Buckallew, an
agriculture teacher, used a 15-acre lot off Foy’s Canyon Road to get her students into the topic of
sustainable forests.
"You’ve got 15 acres of land within 15 miles," she said. "That’s incredible."
With hand-held Global Positioning System instruments, her students hiked up the steep slopes
to find their assigned one-hundredth of an acre circle for a field lab exercise. Once globally
positioned, the students practiced mapping the biodiversity of their circles.
Ortley continued to use the Foy’s area since moving to her Flathead High School classroom. But
she was frustrated by a shortage of instruments.
"The kids were not getting enough time with the equipment," she said.
With education dollars stretched just to cover basic needs, school budgets leave little room for
pricey scientific instruments. Ortley found the answer by spending her off hours applying for
corporation grants to help out.
"It’s a lot of work," she said. "A lot of writing."
The time paid off this spring when she won a Tapestry grant from Toyota for her "Sustainable
Forests in the Flathead Valley." She was chosen for the award by the National Science Teachers
Association.
"Toyota is committed to supporting educators who inspire in students a passion for the
sciences," Irving Miller, a Toyota vice president, wrote in announcing Ortley’s selection.
In her proposal to Toyota and other corporate entities, Ortley connects the dots between the
forest products industry and her classroom projects. The approach also has garnered help from
the Montana Loggers Association.
Ortley emphasized teaching the students the latest in forestry technology isn’t just targeted to
the college-bound.
"It gives students skills they can use right out of high school," she said.
She pointed out that a student who opts to join the family logging operation after graduation,
brings the latest technology to benefit the business. College candidates take a broad-based
introduction to field methods and instruments for a leg up to more advanced studies.
Along with the Foy’s Lake area, Ortley often takes students to neighborhoods surrounding
Flathead High School. The limited variety of native plants and trees available at their doorstep
inspired her to seek funding for her students’ outdoor native plant lab.
As part of spring studies, Ortley and her students grew specimens in a closet in their classroom.
Ortley said the closet operation has become a running joke with her justice of the peace
husband.
"We grow only legal plants," Ortley said with a laugh.
On a trip to Glacier National Park this spring, her students adopted and revegetated an area by a
handicapped ramp in Sprague Creek Campground.
Ortley explained park personnel collect seeds from an area prior to construction projects. Then,
they grow replacement flora and fauna from the seeds in the park nursery to keep the genetics
and ecology consistent.
"It was pouring down rain when we did the planting at Sprague Creek," Ortley said. "They wanted
to plant anyway and they did an awesome job."
She plans to take future students to Sprague Creek in coming years and document plant
progress with photos. At school, they need only step out the door to monitor the native plant
landscaping.
From mostly quack grass and two quaking aspens, the students transformed the south entry with
columbine, Oregon grape, strawberries, Solomon’s seal, lady fern and more. Ortley said she has
more plants and plans to add geologically significant rocks.
She found support for the campus project in sizable contributions of labor and materials from
Doepker Landscaping. Other help came from Cenex, Glacier Gold, Plant Land, Glacier Nursery
and The Nursery for Native Plants.
Ortley will have plenty of students next fall to continue expanding the native plant project with a
full-time teaching position.
She said timing worked out with her oldest child, Ryan, in college, Beth at Flathead, Mike at
Kalispell Junior High School and Bailey at Linderman. Ortley said her supportive husband will help
ease the transition.
With light at the end of the child-raising tunnel, Ortley said she can’t imagine doing anything other
than teaching biology.
"The whole field keeps changing," Ortley said. "There’s always something interesting happening."
MATR Supporters (view all)
Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.