Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools | Education
Robert Esposito, who students lovingly refer to as "Espo," on the first day of school last week. Lucy Gellman Photo.
When theater teacher Rob Esposito steps into his classroom at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, his mission is always the same: to listen to, lift up, and mentor the young people around him, whatever their needs may be. Now, he's getting some national praise for the quiet, steady heroism New Haven has recognized for years.
Esposito, a 27-year veteran of the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS), was recently named one of ten finalists in Kleenex's "Heroes of the Classroom" contest, open to K-12 educators across the U.S. and ultimately decided by popular vote later this month. A son of New Haven, he has spent decades shaping young artists and scholars in the city, from Fair Haven School to his current role as department chair at Co-Op.
Voting opened August 25 and runs through September 8 at 12 p.m.; vote here. In addition to a year's supply of Kleenex, the winner receives $10,000 individually and $5,000 for their school.
In a phone call on Thursday afternoon, Esposito joked that the Kleenex may be more clutch than the funding, because the school always seems to be running low on supplies.
"It's really just nice to be considered," he said. It's fitting, too. "I'm the supply guy at the school, and the biggest thing I say is, 'We need more tissues, we need more tissues!"
"He's somebody who goes out of their way to support students in the building," said Co-Op Principal Paul Camarco, who nominated Esposito for the award earlier this year. "He goes to everything. He photographs everything ... He likes to deliver the mail [to staff]," including boxes of Kleenex that often seem to run out before the end of the year.
Esposito gives notes to the cast of Into The Woods in spring 2025, during tech week. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
In nearly three decades, Esposito has become an exemplar of what it means to show up—not just for students, but for fellow Co-Op faculty members, for alumni, and for artists and theater makers in the community. In the classroom, he's become a home base for students, leading them through the fundamentals of theater with colleagues Scott Meikle, Christi Sargent (she is now at Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy), Janie Alexander, Valerie Vollono, and former student-turned-teacher Sumiah Gay.
Beyond the classroom, he's learned to wear multiple hats, from de facto performance photographer to co-director of the annual school musical to a safe place for alumni to come back to long after they've graduated ("I don’t know who I would be without meeting him," wrote 2020 Co-Op grad Sharric James on social media, a sentiment that dozens echoed as news of the contest became public).
The feeling is mutual: the students keep him coming back too. "I love that I get to do what I do every single day," Esposito said Thursday morning, while welcoming his first class of the year.
His service extends well beyond Co-Op's College Street campus: he's a board member at Long Wharf Theatre, a sometimes-director at Center Stage Theatre in Shelton, and an attendee at nearly every performance in the greater New Haven area, from Elm Shakespeare, Collective Consciousness, Bregamos Community Theater the Yale Rep to other NHPS productions across the district. At any given performance, he's there, often cheering with a playbill clutched in one hand.
Erin Michaud, a colleague in the visual arts department, remembered seeing him "at everything" at the school, as if he's figured out a way to be in multiple places at once. Others, like Gay, credit him with helping them light the spark to become arts educators themselves.
That was fully on view Thursday morning, as he welcomed his 21st senior class into the school's black box theater. In the 1990s, Esposito started his career teaching English and language arts at Fair Haven School. He came to Co-Op in the early 2000s, before the school had made the move downtown or built out a partnership with the Shubert Theatre.
He's seen students and colleagues through multiple transitions, including a massive pandemic pivot and the graduation of his own daughter, Gabriela, from the school a few years ago. And still, he said, every year feels new and exciting.
Around him, two dozen students slipped into their seats, some still grumbling about a new Yondr Pouch cell phone policy as others caught up on summer jobs, pre-school trips and first-day-of-school fits that ranged from Chuck Taylor boots to rhinestone-studded grandpa shorts.
When Esposito looked up and began to speak, everyone fell to a kind of reverent hush. After welcoming students back, he urged them to step into the year as ambitious young artists, standing on the cusp of adulthood with a wide and bright year ahead of them. That will include their senior play and capstone presentations, both of which are required to graduate.
Even in that, he's working to build a support system for both current and former students. For a third time this year, he will welcome back alumna Keona Marie Gomes, a 2021 graduate of the school, as the creative mind behind the senior play, which is one of the last milestones drama students experience before graduating.
"The first thing I'm gonna say to you is live in the moment and enjoy every moment of your senior year," he said before opening the room to reflections and warm ups. "Focus on the joy."
"I don't want to be your teacher," he added a beat later. "What I want to be is an artist working with other artists."
Voting for the "Heroes of the Classroom" contest opened August 25 and runs through September 8 at 12 p.m.. Vote here.