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FACULTY ALUMNA PROFILE
Retired French & German teacher and most senior faculty alumna attending the June reunion,
Marianne Hoffer-Hubert remembers… |
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In 1960 Miss Marianne Hubert left Luxembourg for Sturgis, South Dakota in the USA where she pursued a degree in teaching at Black Hills State Teachers’ College (now Black Hills State University). Diploma in hand, she went on to teach in the states of Wyoming and Montana for three more years. Homesick for her native Luxembourg, she finally returned in 1966 with plans to go back to the States the following year. However, a visit to her family doctor in Luxembourg changed the course of her life forever. It happened that Marianne’s doctor was also the doctor at DuPont de Nemours. He suggested that he might be able to help her get a job at the English Speaking School (also known as the DuPont School) if she would remain in Luxembourg. “So he made me an appointment and there I met my former English teacher who at that time was the head of the school… and I got the job. There were 18 people who wanted it, but I got it!” It was Marianne’s former English teacher, Professor René Schaaf, who had started the DuPont de Nemours Private School in 1963. “He wasn’t very happy with my South Dakota accent,” Marianne tells us, “but he hired me anyway!”
At that time the demographics of the school were very different from today: most of the teachers were Luxembourgers and most of the students were American. Yet the school was constantly growing. “We grew all the time: sometimes rapidly, sometimes more slowly. When the banks came (in the 1980s) there was a big surge in enrolment.” The school began to see an influx of different nationalities, an English as a Second Language programme was established, and the 1982-83 school year brought yet another change of name when the American School became the American International School.
The
Luxembourg government has supported the school from the time of its
founding by providing the premises for it to operate. The school occupied
a number of different sites in the early years, including the Servais
House on avenue Marie-Thérèse and part of the premises of the old Lycée
Technique - Ecole de Commerce et de Gestion (ECG), only a stone’s throw
from our current home on the Geesseknäppchen. In 1977, when the school
moved to the avenue de la Faïencerie in Limpertsberg, the entire school
was initially housed in the building that many current students and staff
still remember as the Lower School building. It didn’t take long to
outgrow it. Soon the Upper School and Administrative offices moved to the
adjoining former convent that Marianne remembers from childhood visits to
her aunt who lived there as a nun. A few years later, Matthew Rhodes
became the first graduate of our school; he was the Class of 1980! The
following year four seniors graduated. A capital fund drive was launched
to build a new gymnasium that was completed in 1986, the school expanded
into the Don Bosco building behind the avenue de la Faïencerie premises,
and finally an Early Learning Centre was built in 1996 to accommodate all
the new students. Plans for the construction of the Geesseknäppchen campus
were introduced in the late 1980s and the decision to build and move was
taken as early as 1992. Marianne remembers that when talk of the new
campus began she was sure that she would finish her teaching career right
around the corner from her birthplace. “It’s a little bit ironic because I
was born in a house on rue Giselbert and I always thought, well, I’m going
to finish up at a school that is located 100 metres from where I was born.
But by the time I retired (in 1997) we were still in Limpertsberg. So I
don’t really feel a connection to this campus. Of course the school was
growing such that we needed this building and I’m sure that if I had moved
here I would have felt at home here too. But because I didn’t, the
building doesn’t mean that much too me.” At the end of the day it is the institution, and especially the people who have contributed to its evolution, more than the name or the location, which inspires an emotional attachment and fond memories. Marianne is now happily retired after 30 years and remains in close contact with former colleagues, students, and parents of students who have become lifelong friends. She was delighted to take part in the June reunion and felt honoured to be asked to address the participants as the ‘most senior faculty alumna.’ She thought the reunion was well-organised and that “the school went way out to do something special. I think everybody had a good time and was happy to be here.” Among many others, she was particularly pleased to meet Chris Raup (Class of 1975, most senior student alumnus attending the reunion, now living in the USA) who she remembers seeing “every morning walking to school on rue Giselbert” back in the days when the International School of Luxembourg was known as the English Speaking School of Luxembourg. |
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And so
it was that Miss Marianne Hubert came to the school in December 1966 to
take over an elementary class from a teacher who was leaving in the middle
of the school year. The shoes of her predecessor were not easily filled.
“My American 3rd and 4th graders informed me, ‘our teacher was a
Yugoslavian princess!’ How do you follow that?” But follow it she did.
Marianne taught grades three and four in the same classroom. “It was very
challenging. I had to do quite a few different things that I had never
done. Having third and fourth grade together was the biggest challenge
because I had done high school teaching in the States. When you’re in a
small school you have to do so many different things… you have to do
everything! Now the school has grown and things are more highly
specialised. I did everything: reading, writing and even music, swimming
and gym. We were in charge of the kids all day long. We had no breaks:
only a half hour lunch and we would alternate taking the kids to the park
so that we could have a break.”