Media specialist retiring after 37 years

After 37 years as an educator, Oak View Elementary School media specialist Patricia D’Avanzo is closing the book on homeroom bells and fire drills and will officially retire Dec. 31. Her final school dismissal is tomorrow.

Born in Little Italy in New York City, her family moved to Bloomfield when she was three and lived mostly on Ashland Avenue. She attended Sacred Heart Elementary School and East Orange Catholic High School. She graduated from Seton Hall University with an English literature major and an English teacher certificate. Her masters is in education from Nova Southeastern University.

D’Avanzo believes she was the first person in her family to become a teacher although others have followed her.

She began as a substitute teacher in Nutley and came to the Bloomfield district in 1986, to South Middle School. She was a seventh- and eighth-grade English teacher and it was the last year South Middle was open. Consequently, she came to Bloomfield Middle School.

“They eliminated a teaching team at Bloomfield Middle School and moved me to Brookdale,” she said. “There I was a third-grade teacher and the principal was Dr. John Autore. He found me a home. He had observed me teaching and had asked me to come to Brookdale otherwise I would have been out. It was Mr. Charles Nankivill, the principal at Bloomfield Middle, who asked Dr. Autore to observe me.”

D’Avanzo said the Brookdale librarian Peg Troast encouraged her to pursue a school library media certification. She did and received it from Montclair State University.
An opening for a library media specialist for Berkeley and Oak View elementary schools became available about a year after her certification. It was a position which would require her to work alternate weeks at both schools. A computer teacher would work the other weeks.

“Sal Goncalves was my principal at Berkeley,” she said. “He hired me.”

After 13 years, the position became full-time and D’Avanzo settled into Oak View for the next 17 years.

The job of a ‘librarian’ has. of course, changed over the years.

“We’re more involved with computers and technology,” she said, “assisting when students run into a glitch. But the tech department does the heavy work.”

Still D’Avanzo said something was lost with the proliferation of student laptops.

“When we gave up the book, there was a loss of imagination and critical thinking,” she said. “There’s something about the printed word. I see my children wanting that printed word. A book transcends the reader.”

Kids would always ask to come to the library, she said, to take a book from the shelf and find a quiet spot to read.

“They don’t bring their Chromebooks,” she said, “but they are needed for research.”

But still the kids wanted to hear her read to them. In a corner of the library there is a spacious area with a carpet for eager young listeners yearning to be spellbound, and a chair for the storyteller from which D’Avanzo would weave the tale.

“There’s more attention to what I’m reading to them,” she said. “But, of course, it depends on the child and how they think.”

The Oak View library is a busy place. Clubs meet there regularly, a practice started by the previous principal. Mary DiTrani, and continued by her successor, Linda Lo.
D’Avanzo said she is retiring now because, after 40 years in education, it was time for a new perspective from a new specialist. In retirement she will, of course, read. Her favorite authors are Beverly Cleary and James Patterson. Her kids got her hooked on Rick Riordan, too.

“Hopefully, I’ll be doing a little traveling with my husband, Anthony, and with family and friends.”

She would also like to see and discover the places in Italy from where her ancestors lived.

“My husband knows where his family is from — Naples,” she said. “I’d like to learn more about my family. My father’s side of the family came from Sicily. A cousin is doing all the research. My mother is half-Napolitan. That’s our goal.”

Teaching, she said, is a noble profession with rewards that are not written on a paycheck.

“There are great rewards that come to you,” she said. “This has been a tough week for me. I’m getting all the hugs.”

  bloomfield, Board of Education