Slockett relinquishes role as Smoke Signal adviser
PV English teacher makes lasting impact on Smoke Signal
After ten years of serving as club adviser of The Smoke Signal, Mrs. Bonnie Slockett will be stepping down from her position, leaving fellow English teacher Mr. Bill Rawson in charge of the paper.
For a decade, Slockett has been a major influence on The Smoke Signal. She has worked extremely hard to not only make an informative and entertaining newspaper for all Pascack Valley students to read, but has also worked to make every student who writes for the paper a better writer.
She saw the potential in each student and worked to make sure that each article written for the paper was the best it could possibly be.
Writers for the paper evolved each year. Students who joined The Smoke Signal freshman year, unsure of how to properly write an article, came back sophomore year as more experienced writers with a stronger sense of effective writing. Much of the credit for this goes to Slockett.
Slockett said, “The students who work on the paper tend to be the kind ones who truly care about the school and want to become better writers, too — a winning combination!”
She gained her position as club adviser of the paper after she was hired as an English teacher at the school. Considering that she was also the Journalism teacher, it only made sense that she would work for the paper as well, even though at first this was a slightly difficult task.
“I admit it was particularly challenging in the beginning — older software was cumbersome and not so user-friendly, but we persevered and just tried to make each issue better than the last,” Slockett said.
Anyone will tell you that writing for the paper and Slockett was a delight. She invited anyone who was even remotely interested in writing to join The Smoke Signal and built a healthy staff of writers. She was never willing to settle for mediocrity and always kept innovating and changing the paper.
The stories that Slockett would publish in the paper were ones that students were genuinely interested in. From teacher and student profiles to reviews of the school plays and musicals, The Smoke Signal truly covered it all.
Rawson certainly hopes to continue the success of the paper while also putting his own unique twist on it. Slockett loves the idea of Rawson taking over for her, adding, “I feel so happy to know that Mr. Rawson will be the new adviser; he has real-world experience as a journalist and is truly passionate about taking the ball and running with it.”
Slockett will be missed, as she did so much for the development and evolution of The Smoke Signal.
Justin Cook graduated in 2015.