Pay It Back Going Forward

In Memory of My Teacher, Annemarie Roeper, I Fear Not

(August 27, 1918 – May 11, 2012)

Legendary educator Annemarie Roeper once told me that ‘if you plan on standing up for the underdog don't expect to be popular’. 

What is soon be a year ago, I tweeted out this sentiment praying these powerful words would inspire others just as they had inspired me.  One response flooded me with such emotion that my eyes welled up with tears:

"The emotions are the heart and soul of giftedness.  The heart and soul of the human being is my passion. Anne Marie Roeper :)", tweeted Joseph Ephraim from his account @freelancejoe, to which I almost immediately replied with the tears then streaming down my face:

"She was my teacher.  Three years before passing in 2012 she wrote to me, "Don't you see I will always be with you?"

At age 16, Annemarie Roeper was the youngest protégé of Anna Freud to ever enter medical school, an honor cut short when the Nazi’s marched on Vienna, where she had grown-up across the street from Sigmund Freud and his family.  She fled Europe with her husband-to-be George, with whom she had bonded with at age 6 when he had first arrived at her parents’ boarding school.  Arriving in the United States, they made their way to Michigan where they founded The Roeper School.  While The Roeper School was established to meet the unique needs of gifted children, Annemarie’s vision of what constitutes education embraced all children for which she emphasized the necessity of a holistic or ‘whole child’ approach.

Her vision transcended education to include a ‘global view’ about which she was wrote as early as the 1940s.  To her, a global view is to see “the whole of the community and the ramifications in the world”[1].

Possessing a global view since her childhood, Annemarie was a natural humanist, possessing a finely honed, internally developed sense of justice and fair play.  She was not only profound in her wisdom but in her fearlessness in acting upon her convictions.  She never wavered from a position necessary to bring about a fair or just result.

She modeled her inner strength to me in a situation that not only proved life-altering but is directly related to the situation now negatively impacting my children and me. This occurred over a decade ago during the initial conflict with the Warren Consolidated School District which, in turn, precipitated a decision by The Roeper School that my oldest daughter was no longer going to be accepted as a student at the school which had not only provided her an education but had come to be a second home for my children and me.  Ultimately, my daughter continued her education at The Roeper School. 

The details of that conflict are no longer relevant.  What is relevant is that while that conflict was on-going, Annemarie, after having unsuccessfully advocated that the school’s decision to exclude my daughter was contrary to the very ethics upon which it was founded, resigned her position on the Board of Trustees.  Her decision, consciously arrived at and executed without any hesitation, was the catalyst for resolution.

Resigning her position on the Board of Trustees was incomprehensible to me as The Roeper School had meant the world to Annemarie and her then late husband George.  For years, I functioned under the ego-based misconception that she had done so for me as we had a teacher/student relationship.  It would many years and not until after her death before I understood that her decision had absolutely nothing to do with me.  Annemarie acted as she did because it was the only right thing to do if she were to honor her deeply held inner-developed core beliefs.  Her faith in what she believed was stronger than the need to maintain the last vestiges of a formal role with the school she loved so very much.  That was and is to this day powerful.

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In standing in silence with the truth for all these years, I had wondered if I might have somehow honored her legacy, her conscious decision to be my teacher, and the investment of her time spent teaching.  This was a question I repeatedly asked myself.  The answer was “No”, until now.  What I know for sure is that it is one thing to stand in silence with the truth but, it is an entirely different reality to feel unfettered in speaking the truth in a dignified manner with the intention that there be relevant social change.   

Annemarie wrote that in order develop the same the psychological mechanisms she had modeled for me, the student must first feel unconditional love and acceptance by their teacher, with that relationship having a shared interest in a subject matter.  I have found this unconditional love with my current teachers.  We have as shared ethos as to the inviolate nature of a breach of the public trust and as to the rights of all children to be protected from harm. 

“When selves have gone through many of these states of growth without losing their emotional ability to grow, they almost invariably become people with a sense of justice who understand their interdepedence with the rest of the world.”  (pg 40).

Annemarie explained:

“Society does not see the world as interdependent, but rather as divided by those at the top of the hierarchy and those that serve them…Over the centuries, we have seen that this framework does not work. It has led to the belief that humankind is master of the work, which it is not.  Moreover, it has led to great destruction and tragedy for earth and humankind.” (pg 93).

She was definitive that we “see the community as a circle of interdependence, rather than a hierarchy of dependency, with peers and community members as cooperators.”  (pg 100).

My faith is unwavering.  I am committed to honoring Annemarie and all of my other teachers by paying it back going forward.

#ImaginePeace

#OneOhana

#DeverouxCleary

#AnnemarieRoeper

#SpeakingTheTruth

#Interdependence

#Community

#UnconditionalLove

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[1] The “I” of the Beholder, by Annemarie Roeper, Ed.D., with Ann Higgins, Great Potential Press (2007).