Valeri McGarvey is wrapping up the latest act in her school theater career where she began it: on the Flathead High School stage.

McGarvey, who got her start in theater as a student at the school, stepped down this month as director of the Flathead High theater department. She also has retired from teaching.

She got her start in theater her senior year at Flathead High. McGarvey had participated in speech and debate as a junior, and at the suggestion of coach David Hashley, she tried out for the school production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

“I got the part of Juliet,” she said. “It was shocking and nerve-wracking, but very fun.”

McGarvey also landed a role in “The King and I,” but after that, her theater career took a long hiatus. She went to college, got married and raised a family.

Then, in the early 1990s, McGarvey’s theater career took off again. A Whitefish woman put on a show called “Showstoppers,” and McGarvey scored a part in the musical production. A few years later, she landed a role in the chorus in “Trouble in Tahiti,” an operetta put on by Flathead High teachers Kevin and Genia Allen-Schmid.

McGarvey didn’t take the stage again until 2006, when she took part in “The Seagull,” a Flathead Valley Community College production directed by Alpine Theatre Project co-founder David Ackroyd. That role led to opportunities to work with Alpine Theatre; McGarvey has been part of at least six productions with the nonprofit theater company.

“That’s been wonderful,” she said. “I think it helps me be a lot more real with students when I can perform and audition.

“I have auditioned a few times and haven’t gotten the role. That’s good for me as a teacher, to remember how it feels. And for students to have seen me as an actor is good, too.”

McGarvey has worked for the Flathead High theater department for 23 years and taught for seven, but her dream of teaching started long before that.

“I always wanted to teach. I decided to become a teacher when I was 16, 17 years old,” she said.

After high school, McGarvey earned her elementary education degree at the University of Montana, but before she started teaching, she had a family and became a full-time mom instead.

But the dream of teaching never faded, and when her children grew older, McGarvey found an opportunity to pursue a teaching career.

“About the time they started to be middle-school, high-school age, I reconnected with Dave [Hashley] and discovered how much I enjoyed high-school age kids,” she said. “I didn’t want to teach them at all in my early 20s, but now I had a few more years’ maturity.”

McGarvey went back to school through the University of Great Falls and earned a second bachelor’s degree in secondary education with an emphasis in English.

Soon after, McGarvey found a job at her alma mater.

“It was a dream come true. It was a little late in life, but to be able to actually teach was awesome,” she said. “And I really wanted to be at Flathead.”

McGarvey had helped out with the school’s theater department for several years already. Then, the year before Glacier High School opened, she got a full-time job in the district teaching at Kalispell Junior High School and Flathead High.

“The second year, the split happened, and I took over the acting classes” at Flathead, McGarvey said. “It couldn’t have been better. I was very blessed.”

In addition to acting classes, McGarvey taught theater as literature and Shakespeare classes. Four years ago, she also took over as director of the school’s theater department.

She will be replaced this fall by Wendy Putzler, but McGarvey isn’t quitting the theater program entirely. She plans to continue to serve as an assistant coach in the theater department.

“For me, it’s just a win-win,” she said. “What I’ve loved the most are the relationships with students and the process of theater. I get to keep that without the confines of the schedule.”

With her newly freed-up schedule, McGarvey plans to spend more time with her family. She has three daughters and three grandchildren, spread out from Portland to Paris. McGarvey said she also plans to continue to pursue her own theater work.

“I would love to do more of my own acting,” she said.

McGarvey is grateful she doesn’t have to give up her school theater work entirely. She said she would miss working with the students too much.

“The process of putting on a production teaches them so much about themselves and about life,” she said. “I’ve seen them transformed. It’s very, very rewarding.

“Teaching is a job where every single day I know I’m making a difference. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that, but overall, it’s a job that makes a difference. That’s been very rewarding for me.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.