Bigfork connection brought Piazzola to Cayuse Prairie

Piazzola was enjoying life as a first-grade teacher in tiny Noxon, Mont. when the door opened to come to the yellow school on Lake Blaine Road.

Piazzola said she and her husband, Brian, were happy running the Big Sky Pantry, a corner store and bakery in Noxon. His parents lived there, and the Piazzolas were raising their four children.

Piazzola taught at Noxon for 12 years but decided to get her master’s degree in educational administration several years ago. She was biding her time waiting for the Noxon principal to retire. That’s when Marge Watson, a retired California school administrator who served as Piazzola’s college supervisor, called her.

Watson was living in Bigfork and serving as interim principal at Cayuse Prairie. She wanted Piazzola to apply for the job.

“The doors just started to open up,” Piazzola said. “We are here because of divine intervention.”

Another nice touch came when she found out that Heather Epperly was a teacher at Bigfork Elementary. Epperly was teaching in Noxon when she encouraged Piazzola to apply as a part-time kindergarten teacher after the Piazzolas moved from Fallon, Nev.

It all kind of just came together.

“I’m a small-town girl,” Piazzola said. “Kalispell is way too big for me.”

She grew up in Ennis, Mont., a town between Bozeman and Yellowstone National Park. She met her husband at the Dairy Queen there one year during the Madison County Fair.

Cayuse Prairie has 213 students this year, which is six more than last year. The school has been hovering around 200 students for the last 10 years, according to longtime office manager Linda Benson.

“We have just enough room,” Piazzola said.

A new gymnasium and two classrooms were added to the school in 2010.

The oldest part of the school was built in 1903. Another building was built in the 1960s, and the two were joined in the late 1970s, Benson said.

The Piazzolas live in Bigfork and their son, Tyler, is a junior at Bigfork High. Their daughters, Maggie, 11, and Morgan, six, attend Cayuse Prairie with their mother. Another son, Brandon, is a freshman at the University of Montana-Western in Dillon.

After arriving, Piazzola set out to establish a school mission and vision statement, which she did, “Rising up to make a difference.”

She facilitated the creation of four committees. Sod was laid last summer to provide a more child-friendly playground.

The best part of her job “is seeing staff and students interact,” she said. “I love when students learn and understand the teachers objectives.”

Piazzola has been working on another assignment too. She co-authored a children’s book about numbered characters, “Ten, Nineteen and In-Between.” It was released last week.

The idea for the book came from Piazzola’s teacher’s aid in Noxon, who illustrated teen numbers on character cards. The cards helped students who struggled with transposing the numbers, Piazzola said.

The book, priced at $10.99, is available at https://sites.google.com/site/teenumbers.

Piazzola plans on marketing the book to teachers for preschool through first-grade students.

Amy Piazzola believes God brought her to Cayuse Prairie.

Piazzola was enjoying life as a first-grade teacher in tiny Noxon, Mont. when the door opened to come to the yellow school on Lake Blaine Road.

Piazzola said she and her husband, Brian, were happy running the Big Sky Pantry, a corner store and bakery in Noxon. His parents lived there, and the Piazzolas were raising their four children.

Piazzola taught at Noxon for 12 years but decided to get her master’s degree in educational administration several years ago. She was biding her time waiting for the Noxon principal to retire. That’s when Marge Watson, a retired California school administrator who served as Piazzola’s college supervisor, called her.

Watson was living in Bigfork and serving as interim principal at Cayuse Prairie. She wanted Piazzola to apply for the job.

“The doors just started to open up,” Piazzola said. “We are here because of divine intervention.”

Another nice touch came when she found out that Heather Epperly was a teacher at Bigfork Elementary. Epperly was teaching in Noxon when she encouraged Piazzola to apply as a part-time kindergarten teacher after the Piazzolas moved from Fallon, Nev.

It all kind of just came together.

“I’m a small-town girl,” Piazzola said. “Kalispell is way too big for me.”

She grew up in Ennis, Mont., a town between Bozeman and Yellowstone National Park. She met her husband at the Dairy Queen there one year during the Madison County Fair.

Cayuse Prairie has 213 students this year, which is six more than last year. The school has been hovering around 200 students for the last 10 years, according to longtime office manager Linda Benson.

“We have just enough room,” Piazzola said.

A new gymnasium and two classrooms were added to the school in 2010.

The oldest part of the school was built in 1903. Another building was built in the 1960s, and the two were joined in the late 1970s, Benson said.

The Piazzolas live in Bigfork and their son, Tyler, is a junior at Bigfork High. Their daughters, Maggie, 11, and Morgan, six, attend Cayuse Prairie with their mother. Another son, Brandon, is a freshman at the University of Montana-Western in Dillon.

After arriving, Piazzola set out to establish a school mission and vision statement, which she did, “Rising up to make a difference.”

She facilitated the creation of four committees. Sod was laid last summer to provide a more child-friendly playground.

The best part of her job “is seeing staff and students interact,” she said. “I love when students learn and understand the teachers objectives.”

Piazzola has been working on another assignment too. She co-authored a children’s book about numbered characters, “Ten, Nineteen and In-Between.” It was released last week.

The idea for the book came from Piazzola’s teacher’s aid in Noxon, who illustrated teen numbers on character cards. The cards helped students who struggled with transposing the numbers, Piazzola said.

The book, priced at $10.99, is available at https://sites.google.com/site/teenumbers.

Piazzola plans on marketing the book to teachers for preschool through first-grade students.