Octagon adviser retires after three years

BY SIRI ATLURI & AVA EBERHART

High school journalism teacher Bonnie Stewart is leaving Country Day after serving as The Octagon’s adviser for 3 years.

“It’ll make me sad, but I think I’ve given Country Day what I can, and I’m ready to retire,” Stewart said.

Stewart has been teaching and working as a journalist for almost 40 years.

“I was a professor at California State University, Fullerton for five and half years. I retired from there in December 2018. I moved to Sacramento to be near my family, my grandkids, my son and his wife,” Stewart said.

At CSUF, she advised the award-winning Daily Titan.

Before that, Stewart worked as an investigative reporter at the Indianapolis Star and then the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

After that, she worked as a journalism professor at West Virginia University, and then at Oregon Public Broadcasting as an investigative reporter also working in multimedia.

Stewart also cares deeply about justice and has reported on environmental stories and stories about the voiceless.

“I think journalism is something that has to be around or democracy is going to be in big trouble. I think it’s so important to have free and fair journalism in this country,” Stewart said.

“There has to be unbiased news reporting, or people won’t know what’s really happening and then they can’t make good decisions.”

Stewart initially took up the adviser position at Country Day because of her passion for journalism.

Since Stewart’s joining 3 years ago as advisor, The Octagon has won dozens of awards, including the most recent General Excellence award from the California News Publishers Association.

English teacher Jane Bauman commended Stewart on her ability to adapt when she initially joined the Octagon staff.

“I think it was an enormous task to come into a school that you’re unfamiliar with, that has its own very specific culture and has years of tradition behind The Octagon, and take over,” Bauman said. “But she certainly was very professional. She really brought her expertise to The Octagon and elevated the newspaper.”

Stewart’s favorite part about working as The Octagon’s adviser was being able to mentor students in journalism. She loved being able to watch students work, talk about reporting and observe the staff’s process as they discovered the issues they wanted to cover in the newspaper.

Now, Stewart is ready to enter a new chapter of her life.

“I got a new puppy, I have a Roadtrek travel van, my sister just moved to the coast of Oregon and I want to be free,” she said.

As she bids farewell to The Octagon staff and the Country Day community, Stewart imparts her final words of advice to the staff: “Seek truth and report it.”