Long-time teacher is retiring

Photo Courtesy of Peter DiCanio
After 44 years, Special Education Teacher Peter DiCanio is retiring after 44 years in the Bloomfield School District.

A high number of school district educators are retiring this month, 13, but none with more years of teaching service than Franklin Elementary School special education teacher Peter DiCanio.

DeCanio’s decades of experience were all in Bloomfield, beginning at Forest Glen in 1981. He moved to South Junior in 1986, for its final year, before ending up at Franklin in 1987.

He grew up in Lincoln Park, Morris County, and attended Boonton High School. He has a bachelor of arts degree from William Paterson College and a masters from Kean College. Those institutions are now recognized as William Paterson University and Kean University.

“My mother was a teacher in West Paterson,” DiCanio said last week. “I saw her doing her work and I was intrigued by it.”

Beside his mother, DiCanio said the boy who lived next door was an early influence.

“We were exactly the same age and he had a disability,” he said. “It was a cognitive impairment, but he was high functioning, but there was a gap in his IQ. That interested me. We kept in touch over the years, but he passed away eight years ago.”

DiCanio was also influenced by the enthusiasm of his high school French teacher and by Susan Kuveke, a special education teacher at William Paterson College.

“I worked in her office matching special ed students to grad students and also became familiar with special ed testing.”

He was also attracted to special ed teaching because it was something apart from mainstream teaching and there was the appeal of teaching to small groups.

At Forest Glen, he credited Rick Paterson as being his unofficial mentor.

“He was very helpful,” he said, “and I followed his lead.”

Other things he remembers were helping out with the Special Olympics and at Franklin, the PHASE Program. The acronym was for: Program for Handicapped Awareness and Sensitivity Training. This was done with general education third-graders who were asked to experience daily routines as a person with a handicap might. Perhaps the student would be confined to a wheelchair or blind-folded. Then the class would discuss the impediment.

“They do not have the program anymore, unfortunately,” DiCanio said. “It ended about 20 years ago. When we did the unit on the blind, we visited a seeing-eye dog school. The training was for the person receiving the dog.”

The biggest change to teaching, DeCanio said, has been technology and it’s been a big help for children with organizational issues. It makes information more accessible to them.

Retirement is coming now, he said, because 44 years is plenty.

“I’m happy, but retiring is difficult,” he said. “But your friends and family are retiring and so you do, too. I’ve had a good run, longer than most. A lot of teachers retired after Covid, but I kept going for a while. I’ll miss my colleagues and hopefully we’ll stay in touch. I told them I’d go to ‘happy hour’ maybe once a month.”

DiCanio plans to see a lot of Broadway shows (“I’m very much into NYC and what’s going on there”) and hopes to find a Scrabble club.

“I’ve always had a big interest in French,” he said. “I was almost a French major. I’d like to do some traveling and get a part-time job. I’ve not ruled out substitute teaching, even in Bloomfield, or volunteering.”