There are little pieces of Anthony “Toj” Colavita all throughout Ben Franklin Elementary School.
He is in the school’s outdoor Science Nature Artist Pondering space, where he helped students plant trees and wildflowers. Lining the doorway that leads to the SNAP garden are mosaic tiles, all designed by Colavita’s students. A peace sign made out of small wooden circles decorated with words and pictures dedicated in honor of former principal Christopher Turnbull, now at Bear Tavern Elementary School in Hopewell, sits just down the hall.
Huge 20-foot murals hang high up in the cafeteria. The art classroom that has been his home for the last 30 years is filled with old projects, like a paper mache cake he and his students made for the school’s 50th birthday, animals made out of clay, and student drawings.
He’s been at the school so long, he’s taught children of past students. He taught art to some of the district’s current teachers, and old students come back often to thank him for his influence, or just to say hi.
You can’t walk far in the school without seeing something—or someone—that has been touched by Toj, but for the first time in over 40 years, Colavita’s voice won’t boom through the halls of a Lawrence Township school. He retired Sept. 30 after teaching art between all the schools in the district for four decades. His stint at Ben Franklin was his longest, but he’s ready to make room for someone new.
“I figured I can’t go on forever,” he said. “Most of the people that I started with way long ago have retired. What am I trying to prove? I’ll just try something else. [At most schools], there’s only one art teacher, if you’re lucky. We’re lucky that we have a solid art program in Lawrence. I think that was partly the reason I stuck around.”
And his colleagues are glad that he did.
“He brings a level of caring that is unprecedented,” said Ben Franklin library media specialist Wendy Offery. “In every single child, he sees their potential, and he helps them realize their potential. It’s not just art. Whether he’s helping a kid who’s having a bad day, or he’s taking them out to plant trees in the SNAP space, or he’s showing them how to rescue ducks that fell into a storm drain, Toj does everything. He’s a quiet soul. He wants no recognition.”
Colavita, 65, still lives in the same house he grew up in with parents Pasquale and Josefine, grandparents Antonio and Filomena and brothers Jim and Pat, the Mercer County Freeholder and former mayor. All of Colavita’s family members worked in or for the township. Antonio and Filomena emigrated to the United States from Italy in 1912; he worked for Trenton Transit and operated a tavern, and she owned a small grocery store.
“Toj is the quiet soul. He’s a good, good man. He’s the best. They don’t make them that way anymore.”
Pasquale was the first Lawrence Township superintendent of recreation, and Josefine worked as a school secretary. Jim taught ceramics at Mercer County Community College, and Pat was an educator before politics. Both of Colavita’s sisters-in-law are also teachers.
“It was a houseful growing up,” he said. “We always had a dog. Because the parents lived with us, all the brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, they all came to our house. That was the meeting place forever, it seemed like. Maybe that’s where we became able to get along with people. There were a lot of personalities.”
He kept birds, ducks, chickens, cats and even peacocks around his home into adulthood, a tradition started by his grandparents.
“If you were an Italian family, what you would do way back when is you would have a chicken coop,” he said. “You might keep some rabbits. You have your vegetable garden and your fruit trees. It was a little bit of Italy over here. It was a way to save money. The sheds are still there. We’ve kind of kept them up in repair so the animals can go in there in the winter, and they live outside. The cats live inside.”
It was in that home that Colavita, primarily a sculptor, discovered his love for art. His brother, Jim, was a sculptor and a builder, and Colavita, the younger brother, wanted to tag along and help whenever he worked on a project.
Thier projects evolved into a group the brothers joined called the Eldridge Park Artists, a performance art troupe that used music, costumes and handmade puppets to tell a story or offer political commentary. It wasn’t quite theater, Colavita said, because the art came first, rather than a plot, or dialogue. That lasted for about a decade, and it took the group to Trenton, Washington, D.C., and the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival.
Colavita went through the Lawrence Township school system, from Eldridge Park Elementary to Lawrence High School, where he was part of the second-ever graduating class in 1969. He attended Mercer County Community College and the Philadelphia College of Art before graduating from Trenton State College. He earned a master’s degree at Brooklyn College and started teaching at Lawrence Middle School soon after. He’s had a hand in teaching at every Lawrence school since then.
“He’s just Lawrence Township,” said Celia Zegarski, a teacher at Ben Franklin who has known Colavita for 22 years. “Toj is the quiet soul. He’s a good, good man. He’s the best. They don’t make them that way anymore.”
Inside the classrom, on the other hand, his students (and even Zegarski) would never describe him as quiet. Colavita told a story about a Slackwood student’s feelings about coming to his class. “I like Mr. Colavita, but he’s loud. But he’s funny, too,” the student said.
His bark, though, is much, much bigger than his bite. He never raises his voice out of anger. Just enthusiasm for his students.
“I guess that’s how they would describe me,” he said. “Loud, funny, I hope helpful. One little guy said to me, ‘I’m going to miss you, Mr. Colavita.’ I said, ‘I’ll be around.’”
And Colavita will miss them, too. He’ll miss the students and the excitement that comes with each school year, and he’ll miss the camaraderie he felt with his colleagues.
“Their joy is contagious,” he said. “You see kids smile, and it makes you feel good, even if you’re having a lousy day. Working with the group of people I work with, they’re enthusiastic. They do 100 percent. Plus, we work well together. There’s a lot of exchange. I think a lot of growth goes on that way. Anywhere I can fit in, if there’s a special project, or something that they need or the kids are learning about, I’m 100 percent with them.”
Zegarski is no stranger to those projects. She cherishes the chicken and hen he made out of straw for her class when she started a chick hatching project. She still brings them out when the eggs come to class. When she wanted her class to make bread warmers out of clay but found herself without a kiln, Colavita offered to fire the clay for her and help her with the order. The project has become a tradition for Zegarski and her students, and she has Colavita to thank for that, she said. He’s worked on collaborative murals with other schools, and he introduced the third grade class trip to the Grounds for Sculpture years ago, longer than Offery or Zegarski can remember.
Though he was in school for less than a month this year, he used that time to spearhead a Red Cross donation project, where students decorated collection boxes for each classroom in the building. Zegarski remembers Colavita coming in during the summer and using his own time and money to mount murals on plexiglass so they would be up and on display for students and staff when they walked into school in the fall. In 2008, he and his students created a giant dragon out of recyclable materials that was displayed outside of the school. He made the head. Students and teachers did the rest.
No matter what the project, he always makes sure to incorporate the students. It’s his hallmark.
“He gets the kids to understand and care,” Offery said. “He’s like the Pied Piper. He leads by example. He doesn’t do it for an award. He doesn’t do it for recognition. He does it because it’s the right thing, and the kids recognize that. He doesn’t have to use words to express that. You can just see it.”
Sometimes, that leads students to discover artistic talents they didn’t know they had.
“The stuff that he has kids make out of clay is just amazing,” Offery said. “He helps children recognize within themselves what they can do artistically, kids that wouldn’t recognize themselves as artists. After they go through his classes, suddenly, ‘Hey, I can make art.’”
That’s all Colavita could hope to inspire, but he said it’s easy to do because kids are so enthusiastic about working with color and clay. His hands-on approach to projects gets an already excited group of children even more eager to learn.
“I’ve had students come back and say thanks out of the clear blue, somebody you wouldn’t have necessarily expected,” he said. “As a teacher, you were always hoping that you touched someone somehow in a positive way. I think that’s our secret underlying goal in life. I really do. I think it’s the humanity of teaching that is wonderful.”
He’ll miss watching his students create, but now, he looks forward to getting some chores done and fixing things up around the house, and maybe doing some traveling—“to Italy, to Borneo, who knows.”
“Maybe I’ll continue doing some art and clay work and volunteer,” he said. “I threatened some of my coworkers that I was going to come back and work with them. I think I’m just going to kind of let it shape itself. The idea is to somewhat keep moving or active. That’s about it.”
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