By Hector Flores
Now, after 25 years of touching young lives, Gaccione has decided to retire, though he vows to remain active in the community he has come to love.
³I¹ve guided people and helped them realize their potential,² he said. ³I believe that there is so much to learn from the arts, and it¹s such a vehicle for self-expression. There are many people with great ideas but no way of expressing them, while artists can, and are very fortunate.²
Gaccione explained that he had learned the value of art as an educational tool when he was in sixth grade at Jacob Gunther. At the time, he had trouble reading. One day when his teacher was absent, a substitute told him that children can learn in many different ways.
Taking this advice to heart, Gaccione decided to have a little fun with a social studies project on European countries he was working on. While other children wrote book reports, gave presentations or showed drawings, Gaccione built a puppet theater and created scenes showcasing important monuments from each European country.
Each day he would have the puppets tour a different country or monument and provide a brief explanation of the significance of each. Throughout Gaccione¹s production, the substitute teacher made sure that the puppet show followed the social studies program. By the end of his presentation, Gaccione saw art as a powerful educational tool and started down the road to becoming an art teacher.
He attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and earned a degree in interior design and architecture. He got his bachelor¹s in art education from Hofstra and two master¹s degrees from C.W. Post, one in art history and another in public administration.
Gaccione explained that part of his inspiration to become a teacher came from watching movies such as 1945¹s ³The Bells of St. Mary.² ³I would watch the movie and see how the nun would help the kids with their problems, and that¹s what I wanted to do,² he said. ³I also wanted to teach kids to be secure in themselves, and to know that it was OK to make mistakes.²
And that¹s exactly what he did. In 1970, Gaccione came full circle when he was hired to be the art teacher at his old elementary school. That same year, he began the Blue and Gold art program, which eventually evolved into the district¹s Creative Arts Program (CAP).
Patti O¹Leary, a North Bellmore resident who attended the school and was a fifth-grader at the time, remembers the program very fondly. ³Mr. Gaccione divided the three sixth-grade classes into two teams, blue and gold,² she said. ³Each team had a theme, and within that theme was a bunch of skits, songs, costumes and props that each team worked on.²
During the school year, O¹Leary and the rest of the students worked on their projects. At the end of the year, they put on a show for students and parents. ³It was a lot of fun, friendships blossomed and the school spirit was high,² she said. ³At the end of the show, both teams got together and lined the school¹s all-purpose room wearing a vest representing their team color. We sang a bunch of songs and made our own light show with flashlights. It was an experience I will always remember.²
In 1980, the program was turned into CAP and included children from the entire North Bellmore School District. Each year 130 students were selected from the district¹s six elementary schools through a screening process and auditions. They were then divided into two groups, art and drama, and bused to Gunther once a week to work on their group project. At the end of the year, the students unveiled their art displays and theater production to parents and teachers at the annual CAP festival in June.
Hope Boyarsky, a 16-year-old student at Mepham High School, remembers her experience in CAP. She credits her decision to study art and her success as an artist to the lessons learned in the program. ³I applied to CAP in fourth grade,² she said. ³I worked very hard preparing my portfolio. Though the zipper is now broken, it¹s the same leather portfolio I lug back and forth to high school for art shows. It¹s also the same portfolio that got me into a class at Adelphi University and a program at Cooper Union.²
Boyarsky added that CAP taught her that art mattered ‹ that it wasn¹t just something to do during her free time, but a possible career. ³I soon saw that with dedication, I could make art just as important as my next English test, and even more important to my future,² she said.
Gaccione said that he has learned that education is a two-way street, and there have been many times that he has learned as much from his students as they have from him. ³One day we were learning how to make holograms, and I had never done them before, and we learned to make them together,² Gaccione said. ³When our hologram worked, I was just as excited as they were, and my perspective changed. Now when I don¹t know something, I tell the kids, ŒLet¹s learn this together.¹²
Now retired, Gaccione is focusing on his interior design company, but vows to one day open an art studio and to continue to pass on his love for art. ³I still want to serve the community I grew up in,² he said. ³I grew up here and went to school here, and I want to continue to help make this place better for all of us.²
Comments about this story? NBuglione@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
