Watchung Hills' Teacher of the Year Readies for Retirement

Bonnie Quigley, who was honored as Watchung Hills Regional High School’s  2013 “Teacher of the Year” earlier this semester, will retire at the end of the school term after 19 years on the Hills' staff.

Quigley has been connected  with the school since 1994, when she started working as a secretary for the Special Services department. Her contacts with the day-to-day activities of the department inspired her to continue her own higher education and she eventually earned not only her bachelor’s degree (from Kean University), but her master’s credentials as well (from Kaplan University), both in the area of special education.  

Over the years, Quigley has  witnessed first hand, and taken part in, the many changes in the field of special education, both in its philosophy and in its practical, real-time applications. Chief among these changes has been the integration of special education students into “regular” classes in every subject area. Whereas, in its earliest stages, special education students were separated, kept apart, from the school’s general population, they now participate in regular, all-inclusive classes in every department, taught by a team of two teachers who will have received  special training and course-work .Quigley is most proud, as well as enthusiastic, about this forward move. .

In addition to her classroom work with Learning & Language Disabled students (LLD), Quigley has been active in Hills’ extra-curricular life. She was involved in initiating the Peer Outreach program which puts special ed students on the same plane, socially, as their peers. The peer outreach members, for example, get the special ed students involved in extra-curricular events, such as the “Spring Fling” (prom).

“It is genuinely warming to see how their peers accept and include students with special needs in their social activities. They are generous with both their time and their understanding.”

Quigley has also served as class co-advisor for eight year stints, working with students in the graduation classes of 2005 and 2009 on class projects (such as  proms) and outreach efforts (i.e., raising funds, participating in special events) over each of the four-year advisory stints.  She‘s also served on the Intervention and Referral Team and on the Curriculum Committee.

Quigley was also deeply involved the fund-raising efforts for the Class of 2006’s specially beloved student, Sandy, a young woman who had been afflicted by neurofibromatosis. Quigley spearheaded the  schoolwide  “Penny Wars” in her honor, one of the biggest fund-raisers ever at Watchung Hills, an effort which generated over $30,000 for the Children’s Tumor Fund.

Quigley’s busy day is book-ended by a commute to Forks, PA, where her four grandchildren, ages 7, 5, 3 and eight months coincidentally also live. (Their two mothers, one-time residents of Watchung, are graduates of Watchung Hills.) Reading and knitting for a hospital charity are Quigley’s after-hours pastimes.