After 25 years of teaching, Eastport South Manor's Ken Hanlon takes a bow

Ken Hanlon took his final bow after 25 years teaching seventh grade social studies at Eastport South Manor Junior-Senior High School in Manorville last month — in a middle school musical.

“Colonial Idol,” an “American Idol” history-themed spoof he and his students have written and performed annually since 2005, featured Hanlon, 62, of Port Jefferson Station, impersonating British judge Simon Cowell as students dressed as American patriots sang parodies like “Don’t Tax us, King,” to the tune of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”

“It was my swan song,” he said. Hanlon graduated from Commack South High School in 1982 and has a bachelor’s degree from the former Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. From his 20s until his late 30s, he owned a Boar’s Head meat delivery route in the Hamptons. After reconnecting with an old basketball camp buddy while driving by the former Eastport High School, he said he realized catering was unfulfilling.

He went back to school and received a master of arts in teaching in social studies from Stony Brook University and joined the Eastport South Manor faculty at age 38. “Best decision I ever made,” he said.

Hanlon said he’s made American history relevant to students with field trips to George Washington’s Setauket Spy Trail, reminders that Port Jefferson is named after Thomas Jefferson and Black history lessons “on the blues and the origins of barbecue.”

“I want students to understand that the people who made history are no different from them,” he said.

Those “authentic connections” made Hanlon “a teacher that students remember for the rest of their lives,” said Eastport South Manor English teacher Julie Deluca, who has team-taught with him for 15 years. Hanlon, who has also coached school sports, “makes an effort to show up at school plays and concerts and sporting events,” Deluca said. “If the kids wanted him there, he was there.”

His students agree.

“He explains things in a way that kids can understand,” seventh grader Anabella Marzillier said in comments emailed by Deluca. Brielle Miller, also a seventh grader, added, “The advice he gives helps me change for the better. I feel like he is like my grandpa in school.”

Retirement doesn’t mean Hanlon is stepping away from students. Hanlon is recording an educational podcast, “Back to Class With Mr. H,” in which he reconnects with former students to “check on what they are up to in life, and the spark that led them on that path.” He foresees setting up a podcasting network of fellow teachers telling their own “positive stories about the impact a teacher can have on a student.”

The podcast, posted on Apple, Spotify and other apps, is a way for him to process the heartbreak of losing his wife, Patricia Hanlon, 61, in an December auto accident in Ronkonkoma, he said.

“It’s a great tool for me in retirement,” Hanlon said. “I have a way to channel my grief.”

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