For many people, starting a new career later in life seems like a crazy and very vulnerable choice. Many chose to stay in a job they don’t enjoy in order to not have to deal with the fear, or the task of doing something new. Someone that we’re lucky enough to have at our school that followed through on this arguably brave path, is the lovely Margaret Dennison.
Something many people don’t know about the energy filled and ray of sunshine that Dennison is, is that she hasn’t been a teacher for all that long. In fact she also has not been in Montana for all that long either.

Before her time here at Sentinel and under the big sky, she lived in California. The job that she had there was a claims adjuster. For those who are similar to myself, and don’t know what that is, Dennison likes to use the connection between the Pixar movie The Incredibles. The monotonous and miserable job Mr.Incredible goes through at the beginning of the movie in the plain gray office is what Dennison did for almost 10 years!
Though Dennison doesn’t describe the previous job with such a negative connotation, she admits that it wasn’t her passion.
She claims that the job was something that “fell into [her] lap” and the next thing she knew it was 10 years later and she still hadn’t gotten her dream job as a teacher. So how did she end up getting here with us Spartans?
As mentioned, Dennison has strived to become a teacher since she was a kid, but became discouraged when she got denied by her first application to Teach for America. She says this was a time when she felt “disenchanted,” so taking the job as a claims adjuster was the safer option she ended up choosing.
Though she did enjoy the amount of math that came with the job, it wasn’t her dream nor something she felt a need to continue doing her whole life. She ended up leaving the job after nearly a decade and stayed home with her kids for the next six years. In those six years she also enjoyed the companionship many love, which is that of her dogs. Dennison also expresses her love for all the stereotypically “nerdy” movies like Star Wars, and Lord Of The Rings.
During this time with her kids she went back to school which she says is the number one thing to make you feel like you are back in your twenties, even if you’re far from it. She went back for her teaching and math degrees as a full adult. It excited her to know she was making her way to the job she had been hoping for forever.
She then came up here to Montana with her family for a planned short term stay for summer vacation to visit with her grandparents. Her grandparents had been living up here for their whole lives, her grandpa growing up in Missoula and her Grandma in Perma. Little did Dennison know that this would soon end up being her new home after finding a love for it here up north. We now have been lucky enough to have Dennison as a teacher with us at Sentinel for six years and counting!
It is not surprising that Dennison would ultimately choose to stay here, considering the love for nature she has. When asked about what activities she loves outside of work, she immediately mentions gardening. Whenever striking a minimal conversation about nature or gardening she will immediately start glowing and share as much as she can on the topic.
One thing Dennison mentions as to the growth she hopes to see in our school is a transition she made within her own life when she started living here. When she moved into her house here, it was a blank slate of a lawn. Out front of her house she was excited to paint a beautiful picture with her shrubs, plants, and bugs. She explains that similarly, Sentinel has an enormous amount of plain lawn that admittedly can be managed with just a lawn mower, but still burns fossil fuels.
If we were to introduce the environment Dennison added to her lawn at home, we would be able to have a sustainable environment that would take little maintenance once the process starts. She says this will also address the problem of not having our compost bins this year since the compost is no longer being picked up.
This is an agenda that Dennison is very passionate about and hopes that anyone else that would be interested in implementing these ideas will find her, and be able to make it happen in the years to come.
Something Dennison also hopes to see in the school now is a stronger confidence in the students. She knows that math specifically can force you to be more vulnerable. Dennison herself attends “math circles,” and even as much as math is a joy for her, she can get self conscious and shy when it comes to those vulnerable situations. She gets things wrong among her peers in those groups, the same as her students may be wrong in her classroom. Dennison knows that math “can be scary as heck,” but she wants to create an environment inside her classroom and throughout the school, where being vulnerable is okay.
She hopes that even as we are “naturally self conscious creatures,” kids in her class will be able to be comfortable with getting a math problem wrong.
During my interview with Dennison it was hard to deny the warmth she radiated, even when it was my first time ever meeting her. Dennison has an undeniably energetic personality and never falls short when hyping up the things she loves the most, like teaching as well as gardening. To any student finding themself in the opportunity to talk to her, or even simply say “hi”, I would strongly advise the chance to converse with such a sweet soul.