Zoning off in room 177 and observing the art on the walls is like reliving the riveting breakthrough stories of history. From Former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to Bark administering its first sex survey in 1974, the classroom’s walls highlight the most influential coverages of Redwood journalism. On this very wall, right next to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon stamped in a 1968 Bluewood appearance, legendary Bark advisor Sylvia Jones is painted alongside her cursive signature, commemorating her foundational role in the program. 

Every teacher hopes to make a lasting impact on their students, but Jones went to the next level, educating Redwood students over four decades. Although taken from the physical world in December 2024, Jones’ trademark style, unique mentorship and beaming joy ripples through each journalistic achievement in room 177, where today’s Barkies admire Jones’ legacy. 

Jones had a gift for accentuating the potential in her students, letting them grow into adulthood. When she noticed former student Jeff Ponting (‘77) struggling with substance use and pulling away from school, Jones gave him faith to put himself back on track.  

“When she met me, I was someone who didn’t see any good in myself,” Ponting said.“Jones would figure out what you were interested in, then she would support and enhance it–she would feed it.” 

Making waves in the 70s, Jones advised Bark during some of the program’s most momentous coverage. Eric Schmitt (’78) and Mary Anne Ostrom (’77) worked as reporters for various news outlets following their shifts as editors-in-chief of Bark. Schmitt, who received four Pulitzer Prizes for his national security coverage at the New York Times, is humored by Jones’ commitment to enhance her students’ minds. 

“She would challenge us with vocabulary… She wrote the word ‘treacle’ and I think I had to scurry to my dictionary to find out what treacle–kind of cloying and maybe overly sentimental–meant, [as] I had no idea at the time. Even then, she was thinking about elevating [our] writing and [teaching us to] expect more of [ourselves],” Schmitt said.

While guiding Barkies in developing their investigative interests, Jones was careful not to overshadow their creative potential. 

“She had the right balance between advising and letting us [run] the paper and the staff. If we made mistakes, she wouldn’t catch us every time, but she was there both as a sounding board and a backstop,” Schmitt said.

Jones was in charge of a lively teenage group, but what kept the program together was her close relationships with each student. Leaning on Jones as an advocate for student press rights cemented the Bark as a thorough news organization, allowing students to feel supported in their investigations. Former Bark staff member Louis Alessandria (‘77) characterizes Jones’ magic touch as letting teengers’ wave of expression flow beyond the classroom and into the paper. 

“She just let us be us. I think that was the secret sauce,” Alessandria said. “She didn’t really reign us in – I’m sure there were things we probably shouldn’t have done, and we had boundaries, but [Jones] let us write what we felt and what was important to us.” 

Having this freedom and encouragement of curiosity led the paper to some controversy, but Jones balanced administrative and student tensions when pushback to the press ensued. 

“[Jones] gave us confidence in ourselves by letting us go out and make our mistakes,” Alessandria said. “We did a story about how easy it was for people to buy alcohol [and] we pushed it. She encouraged us to go with our ideas—run with them.”

While providing the platform for students’ voices to be heard, she ensured professionalism in their writing. This helped keep the program out of trouble and elevate the staff writing.

“She had that red pen all the time that she would take out and circle things and put things in parentheses. I think she might’ve done that to my entire paper one time, [writing] ‘You need to try again on this,’” Alessandria said. 

Alessandria wasn’t the only one given the red pen test; Jones helped Schmitt question his writing, but she did it in her spunky style, always making sure to use equally constructive and eloquent phrases. 

“I remember looking over some of the ledes that I wrote. She didn’t like some of them, and [she would write] in these big, black letters, ‘TRITE’ across the [top], or ‘You can do better!’ It wasn’t a put down; she knew how to both motivate you and also push you to be more creative, more thoughtful, but also more challenging [in] taking on topics that were difficult in those days,” Schmitt said.

Schmitt credits Jones with pushing him to use an innovative writing approach that allowed him to interlace his innate creativity with up-to-date stories, but each student learned from Jones in a unique way.

“[Jones] really cared about us and she wanted us all to do well, letting us find our way as opposed to telling us how to [grow into adulthood],” Alessandria said. 

But some students had a harder teenage journey, and Jones had a special warmth that allowed these students to open up to her. Ponting had felt lost in high school, leaning on substances to find his way. 

“[A good teacher] empowers their students so that they find out the best of themselves, [and this] is what she did,” Ponting said. “She took me out for coffee and she said, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you hurting yourself?’ and my response to her was ‘I’m not going to make 21, so I might as well do whatever – it doesn’t make a difference.”

But Jones knew that this 17-year-old had so much left to live for, and watching him toss his potential wasn’t an option. She had been giving Ponting books to inspire him, and Jones soon used these books to guide Ponting outside academics and give him hope for the future. 

“The book she got me after [we got coffee] was ‘Ordinary People,’ which…is about how [a teenager] goes to therapy and gains self esteem and realizes life is worth living. [Jones] was afraid I was going to kill myself…I think she thought that I was reckless and irresponsible, that if I continued down that path I would have killed myself,” Ponting said. 

Ponting’s relationship with Jones highlights just how in-tune Jones was in her students’ lives. 

“She wanted me to see there was a way out of the downward spiral…I was very fortunate to have somebody like that in my life,” Ponting said.  “Her impact goes well beyond the people she directly touched – it’s what [those people] do afterward. People don’t die as long as the ripple of their impact continues, and her impact is well beyond me.”

Jones made the walk of adolescence less abrasive for her students. Providing an attentive support system beyond the classroom walls was something unique to Jones’ impact. 

“When you have a toddler, an infant, in front of you and they’re discovering things that you take for granted—like a rolly polly, for example, or the first time they flush the toilet by accident, or the first time they go down a slide, or the first time they go in the water – it’s like, ‘Oh my God, life is a miracle – it really is a miracle,’ and you forget it…I just love that rediscovery,’” Ponting said. “I don’t have regrets about anything in high school, but I wish I had slowed down. I wish that I had really taken the time.”

And this is something that Jones helped Ponting develop: living in the moment. Each student, though, had different takeaway lessons from their advisor. 

“She would impart her wisdom on us; the biggest thing I learned [from her] was to be myself,” Alessandria said. 

Self-discovery is often rooted in introspective reflection, and Jones propelled this inner growth in her students. 

“She kept us honest about ourselves, our own attitudes,” Ponting said. 

During various political activist movements nationwide in the 70s, many Barkies admired Jones’ innate ability to ease conflict in journalistic coverage.

“She would be your strongest defender. She had this knack of being your toughest critic but also your biggest advocate,” Schmitt said. “Both she and Donal Brown [Jones’ co-advisor] would always be huge advocates of ‘freedom of the press’ and drilled that into us.”

Brown worked alongside Jones in the fight for student journalism, keeping afloat the integrity of reporting at the local level. Though Brown is applauded for his work, he’s humble about his and Jones’ true impact in his students’ lives and perception of journalism. 

“[Jones and Brown] kept us honest about ourselves, our own attitudes,” Ponting said.

At Jones’ celebration of life ceremony on Mar. 2, Brown had a heartfelt speech prepared to honor his time with her as they both navigated uncharted rules of journalism for their students. Many credit Jones and Brown for their careers after Bark, but those who were able to be at Jones’ celebration received a first-hand recollection of what it was like to see her as both a teacher and a friend. 

“Consistent with the work of previous Bark advisers, Jones preserved and strengthened the Bark as a student-run enterprise, a vehicle for student opinion,” Brown said. “[Jones also] had a perverse sense of humor. On my birthday, she loved leading her classroom of students into my room to sing happy birthday. I hate the birthday song and my birthday generally so I ran out of the classroom on one occasion and jumped out a window on another. She thought it was great fun.”

Many former students hadn’t spoken to Jones since 2009 when Redwood hosted their 50th anniversary brunch and invited alumni to the campus. 

“I didn’t tell [Jones] what I felt about her until the 50th anniversary. I regret that – I was cavalier about it, I think reckless as well,” Ponting said. “I felt guilty. I felt guilty that I had not expressed to her what she had done for me [until that day].”

Beyond extending her warmth into their personal lives, Jones granted her students liberties that many would think unfathomable for their teenage counterparts.

Jones did more than just amplify the student voice: she echoed it. 

“I remember [Jones] would let Ponting and I take her Volkswagen Karmann Ghia to pick up the paper from the printer – we drove her car,” Alessandria said.

Even though Jones’ advising style tested boundaries, these boundaries were crossed in the name of the paper; former students remember Jones for believing in the independence of journalism to untangle a complicated world. 

“There are so many people in life that will mean so much to you, do so many things for you, and if I have a message for anybody, [it’s] take the time, just take the time to talk to people because they need to hear it,” Ponting said. “People need to hear nice things…One of the resolves I’ve made in my life is before I die, I am going to tell everyone what they’ve meant to me.”

While many wish they could see Jones today and thank her for the impact she has had on their lives, her generosity is alive in former and current Barkies.

“That’s what [Jones] did: she built on it – the paper got better and better, and that was her and [Brown] together working on that,” Ponting said. “We had incredible talent, but bringing everybody together was another job, to have a goal together and achieve a goal together…and that’s what [Jones] always, always said: it’s about creating good trouble.”

Beyond acting as an intermediary between the reporters and readers of the paper, Jones tended to Bark’s issues and helped students find their place in the competitive world of journalism.

 “[Jones] found a strength in every single person and helped them figure out how to [overcome challenges],” Ostrom said. “Many of us teenagers were trying to figure [life] out, and she helped us.”

For Schmitt, his main challenge was interlacing his creative writing into the factual style of reporting. 

“I think what I remember most about [Jones] was [that] she was incredibly encouraging, but she was tough—you just couldn’t get away with anything with her,” Schmitt said. “She gave you a thorough but candid assessment of your work.” 

Ostrom attributes Jones’ impact on students to her attentiveness in their lives. 

“She believed in students’ abilities. I think her goal as a teacher was to help young teens find themselves…she would look at every individual student, whether in journalism or not, and [guide them],” Ostrom said.

Jones’ teaching style had something special about it. Schmitt liked to call it “thorough,” while Ostrom attributed her style to dealing with a classroom full of “ultra-strident” teens. 

“There’s always this teacher-student relationship, and because we were this tight social group among the students, I think she kind of felt those of us who had promise–journalistically and writerly–she was going to encourage that. I think she saw something in me and really wanted to encourage me to pursue [journalism],” Schmitt said.

While Jones exuded a loving nature in the classroom, her ability to co-habituate this quality with respect amplified her personable charm. Relating the typewriters that filled the 1970s Bark room to current-day reporting, many think Jones was ahead of the curve in modernizing journalism. Schmitt believes Jones would be proud of where Bark is today, tying the staff members’ growth to the advisors’ encouragement. 

“I think her message to us today would be [to] keep going, keep reporting, keep writing [and] keep focus on the big story because that’s the most important thing,” Schmitt said.

Balancing Jones’ caring nature with her sense of humor was one of the most memorable qualities of the Bark room, with many now-grown students recalling her presence at the front of the class. It’s been years since most of Jones’ students have walked the Redwood grounds and many have a hard time remembering the dates and specifics of Jones’ impacts. Nonetheless, there is one common denominator in each student’s recount of their time with her: Jones’ witty, persistent smile. 

“In my mind, Sylvia will always be a very youthful instructor,” Schmitt said. “For me, the image of Sylvia was always kind of set in that classroom, it wasn’t as she aged through the years, and [her passing] immediately took me back to this class. [Jones] would be in front, and she’d have this droll sense of humor with this look in her eye.”

Her presence was captivating, though, which is impressive in a room of lively, opinionated teenagers. 

“Many of us were barely 16, sometimes insecure, ultra-strident, and she taught us how to use our individual strengths to make a better world—it wasn’t only about making deadlines,” Ostrom said. “This is the world she was dealing with.”

Jones continues to inspire Redwood community members to look beyond their deadlines and into their most pressing questions. Schmitt and Ostrom give a glimpse into what Bark felt like 48 years ago, but the best way to understand the surface of Jones’ impact today is to look at the memory she has left behind.

“There were teens who were troublemakers and she figured out how to help us find our strengths and [harness] our ability to ask hard questions,” Ostrom said. “[We] learned life lessons that only the best and most memorable high school teachers can [share].”