Farewell ‘Mr. P’: Aldo Palmieri Reflects on His 42-Year Teaching Career in Avalon
The first and only job application Mr. Aldo Palmieri ever filled out is what kick-started his lifelong teaching career at Avalon Middle School. Palmieri, or “Mr. P” as he’s more commonly known, is an English and history teacher of 42 years at Avalon who announced that he will be retiring at the end of this school year.
“It’s been the joy of my life,” Palmieri says. “But it’s also bittersweet. I know that I’m going to miss what I do. Avalon has been like a second family to me.”
Born and raised in the small farming community of Buena, N.J., Aldo Palmieri could have become a farmer like many of his classmates in the close-knit community. But he wanted more.
“I just wanted to try something a little different,” Palmieri explains. “It was a really wonderful place to grow up as a kid. But I looked around and decided that I wanted to go to school.”
Palmieri’s parents, neither of whom attended school beyond eighth grade, saw the value in their son seeking a higher education. Aldo would take that one step further … not just getting a higher education, but a higher calling.
“I feel that’s what I was born to do, to teach,” Palmieri says. “I just wanted to work with kids. I didn’t exactly know how, but I knew when I was in high school that that’s what I wanted to do.”
After graduating from Buena High School in 1978, Glassboro State College wasn’t just the natural choice for the South Jersey boy, it was the only choice. Having only applied to Glassboro State and nowhere else, Palmieri was fortunately accepted, and knew from the start what he wanted to do: teach. During his time at Glassboro, Palmieri attained a degree in secondary education with a specialization in English and history, because “I definitely wasn’t a science and math kid,” he admits.
After graduating college, Palmieri’s call to teach would soon be answered … in the first inning of a recreational softball game. When Palmieri came up to bat, the umpire, a friend of his, asked if he had found a job teaching yet. When Palmieri told him no, the umpire told Aldo that a friend of his had recently become the principal of Avalon Middle School, and said that there were a few job openings there. When the game finished, Palmieri had a confession to make.
“I said, ‘I’ve never been to Avalon,’” Palmieri recalls. “I had no idea where it was. So he asked ‘Well, where have you been?’ and I said ‘Ocean City.’ And he said, ‘Well, go to Ocean City, jump on the Parkway, and there’ll be a big sign that says Avalon.’”
The next day, Palmieri took his friend’s advice, drove down the shore and looked for the “Cooler by a Mile” sign. When he arrived at Avalon Middle School for the first time, computers had not yet commonly been used in schools. A front office administrator at the school handed him a paper application, and suggested that he mail it back to the school at his convenience. Palmieri had a different idea.
“There were a couple desks in the office,” Palmieri recalls. “So, I asked her, ‘Do you mind if I fill it out right now and give it right back to you?’”
Just one week, and three interviews later, Palmieri was hired.
“It was the only application I ever put in to be a teacher. I never applied anywhere else, and it was the only interview I’ve ever been on … I think I was meant to be there.”
From Day One, Mr. P has made the hour commute from Buena to Avalon. While some might have ditched that ride and moved much closer, Palmieri always made the most of it.
“I’ve grown to like the ride,” Palmieri says. “In the morning, I plan my day. In the afternoon, I reflect back on my day … You have to be your own biggest critic. The ride home has been my self-evaluation tool … There are some rides where I never turn on the radio … It’s definitely helped me over the years.”
Once the seventh- and eighth-grade English, reading, and history teacher gets to work, everything else fades away, because in his mind, it has to.
“You’re working with a precious commodity,” Palmieri says. “The second you walk into the school, everything in your life has to shut off. It has to be like a light switch. Because what’s going on in your life, whether it’s positive, negative, or anything in between, that has to go away … We all have challenges as we grow older, but you have to check the challenges out. Because that time you’re there, it’s 110% about the kids.”
Though some might assume that teaching must have changed drastically over the course of nearly five decades, Mr. P feels like it’s more or less the same.
“Kids are kids … The circumstances that we live in have changed … but the kids haven’t. Kids are like truth indicators, they see your heart. They know if you’re real or not, and that hasn’t changed in 42 years. The kids haven’t changed, but the circumstances around the job have.”
Having always been an avid fan of Philadelphia sports, specifically baseball, it was important for Palmieri to share that love with his students. The only problem, however, was that for the first 40 years of Palmieri’s career, Avalon Middle School had no official athletic programs. Therefore, Palmieri and his colleagues always did their best to support the kids by coordinating after-school clubs sponsored by the Avalon recreation center.
Of the four to five clubs for which Palmieri was responsible in a given year, his favorite was always “After-School Activity,” when he could play numerous field games with his students, including kickball, Wiffle ball, and flag football. The most memorable game had to be what Mr. Palmieri’s students dubbed “P-Ball,” a game personally created by Palmieri and described as a combination of dodgeball and Wiffle ball.
Palmieri always embraced letting his students see his laid-back demeanor in action. “It’s important for the kids to see you in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers … running around in a field, not necessarily in a classroom setting,” he shares.
Palmieri’s knack for encouraging genuine creativity, embracing physical activity, and having an ever-positive attitude blended perfectly for a teaching career in a beach town. Not many teachers can say that some of their students go surfing before class, nor does the average educator get to take their students to the beach to plant dune grass. Palmieri appreciates the unique setting of teaching in Avalon.
“It’s different … On the last day of school, the students take a plunge into the ocean. Not a lot of teachers get to experience that,” Palmieri laughs. “Having that wonderful body of water just a few short blocks away.”
Avalon Middle School’s unique proximity to the ocean could certainly be the reason for one of Mr. Palmieri’s most cherished teaching memories. Early on in his career, Palmieri taught a young man who had aspirations of becoming a ship captain. While the student’s parents were supportive of this dream, their first priority for their son was for him to get a proper education. Mr. P encouraged both the boy’s dreams and his higher education, so his student pursued both. Years later, Palmieri got a call late in the night. It was the young man from many years earlier calling Mr. P to let him know he was on his way to the Bahamas to become the captain of a charter sailboat.
“The young man said, ‘I just want you to know that you were always so positive in telling me to listen to my parents, but to also follow my dreams,’” Palmieri recalls. “It always stuck with me. It taught me early in my career that this is the impression teachers make on people. What you do is really really important.”
Palmieri has helped mold and mentor thousands of students over the years, some of whom have come full circle. An astonishing four current coworkers of Palmieri’s were once his students, and they all still refuse to call him anything other than “Mr. P.”
“It definitely brings your career into a different light,” he says. “It’s a smaller school, so you really get to know generation after generation. I can’t imagine how many moms, dads, and kids that I’ve taught … Almost everybody there, I’ve been teaching longer than they’ve been alive.”
After two decades of working closely with Palmieri, fellow Avalon teacher Catherine Krause has nothing but praise for her longtime colleague and friend.
“Aldo is a wealth of knowledge and advice. I’ll miss our witty exchanges in the hallway … There will be a void without his nuggets of wisdom and stories … He is one of a kind and I know the hallway will be a little dimmer next year without Sunshine!”
The summer of 2025 will not only mark the end of an era for Avalon Middle School, but it will also bring about one of the biggest changes of Palmieri’s life.
“There’s a lot of mixed emotions,” he says. “It’s something I’m going to miss terribly … I’ve had so much fun. God’s blessed me because I’ve worked 42 years and I don’t really feel like I’ve worked a day.”
While Palmieri plans to indulge in the usual retirement pleasures like travel and golf, he’s also excited for his first summer without an impending school year. Palmieri knows that even though next September is going to feel quite different in retirement, he says he’s looking forward to spending more time with his sons, Connor and Steven, as well as his granddaughters Annabelle and Emma.
“I was lucky enough to work in such a wonderful place, but I’m also looking forward to the back nine of my life … having the relationships that I have right now continue to grow and blossom,” he says.
Looking back on his lifelong teaching career that took just one application to make a reality, Palmieri feels nothing but gratitude.
“Oh, my goodness. You can’t believe how lucky I’ve been, how blessed I’ve been. What a wonderful place to teach. I’ve worked with so many great people. The town of Avalon … It’s become my second home.”
Mr. P corrects himself.
“It is my second home.”