Annemarie Roeper (August 27, 1918 – May 11, 2012) was a pioneer in gifted education who founded the Roeper School (Michigan) with her husband George in 1941. The school continues on two campuses: lower elementary grades in Bloomfield Hills and Middle-Upper Elementary in Birmingham, in Michigan.
Early life
Annemarie was born on August 27, 1918, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to parents Max and Gertrud Bondy.
Gertrud Bondy was a medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist-in-training with Sigmund Freud. Gertrud and her husband Max founded a series of schools focusing on, “psychoanalytic understanding of human development and a desire to educate children to build and thrive in a pluralistic, democratic society” including a school in the town of Marineau. Annemarie observed the strong independent educational ideals very early in life in the school that her parents were creating. The school was Schule Marienau, which is still operating outside Hamburg.
Though the family consisted of mainstream Lutherans, the Bondy family were of Jewish heritage. After the Nazi party came to power in Austria, Max Bondy sold the school, struggling with this Nazi notion that he was not German because of his heritage. He and Annemarie fled in the spring of 1938 with the help of George Roeper, a student in her parents’ school. They escaped Germany before the German invasion of Austria was complete. They left just ahead of the train out of Germany that carried Anna Freud and her parents. They fled first to Switzerland, joining her mother who had fled a year earlier. Then, in 1939, they went to the United States. Prior to the German invasion of Austria, Annemarie had planned on higher education with Anna Freud.
Annemarie married George Roeper in New York City on April 20, 1939.
Education
Annemarie Roeper never fully finished any higher education past high school. While a medical student at the University of Vienna in 1937, she was the youngest person to ever be accepted to study child psychoanalysis with Sigmund and Anna Freud.
The March 1938 the German invasion of Austria prevented her from being able to truly begin her studies. Roeper was able to flee with her father on the last train across the Austrian border before the Germans invaded while Sigmund and Anna Freud fled soon after. Eastern Michigan University awarded an honorary doctorate to Roeper and her husband, George Roeper, in 1978.
Career
Roeper and her husband, George, established Roeper School (Michigan) in 1941 with only nine students. Today the school serves over 630 students, from preschool to 12th grade, still focusing on an intense recognition for every student's needs, and a profound appreciation for emotional and intellectual commitments.
Roeper is recognized as a pioneer for gifted education. Her insistence that the soul of the gifted child is as important as their cognitive abilities has influenced how many gifted educators and counselors interact with these children.
In 1941 Roeper and her husband were invited to Detroit to direct a nursery school and also established a grade school. Their schooling techniques caught on quickly, and the school grew rapidly. The Roeper School began expanding so much that in 1946 they purchased a campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1961 they expanded by purchasing a second campus in Birmingham, Michigan. George was head of the lower grades school in Bloomfield Hills until 1979; Annemarie headed the high school in Birmingham until 1980, when she retired.
In 1956, the same year that Roeper and her husband George established the first board of advisors for the Roeper School, they also convened a panel of national experts and developed a curriculum for gifted children. In September 1956 the Roeper School became only the second school in America to focus solely on gifted education.
Annemarie Roeper's ideas about young childhood cognition caught the eye of Joan Ganz Cooney, and together they worked and consulted on the development of the Sesame Street television show for children. Roeper was a Sesame Street workshop consultant while working on the show.
Roeper taught courses on gifted education at Oakland University in the Greater Detroit area in Michigan.
She retired from the Roeper School in 1980, although she remained on the board of trustees until 2002. In 1989, Roeper received the President's Award from the National Association for Gifted Children for a lifetime of distinguished service to the field.
Roeper published over 100 articles and book chapters, three scholarly books and four children's books. Her last publication was the book ‘Beyond Old Age: Essays on Living and Dying’.