RETIREMENT SEASON: FAREWELL DR. ANDERSON

Since he is retiring this June, we as the members of The Luther Tatler felt that we should commemorate Dr. Anderson’s teaching here at Luther through an interview.

Q. Could you provide us with a description of your history at Luther?

A. An alum, a student I taught back a little while ago, reached out to me with an email to ask me for coffee and he made the joke that it would be nice to talk to somebody who was alive when the school opened. How flattering is that?

My history here started in the fall of 1987. I interned here and then the following fall, I had in 1988, a choice between Balfour and Luther and I chose part-time here. During my internship I realised that because this was a special place, I wanted to be part of it. I started teaching here in fall of 1988. I was teaching English 20 to international students, a kind of an early version of ESL, and in the following year, I moved to full-time English. I became the Vice Principal in 2004, and in 2007, I became the Principal. In 2020 I became the Principal and Head of the School.

Q. Could you describe your first years at Luther?

A. Yeah, it was chalk on green boards and gestetners, no photocopiers.

Q. I don’t know what that means.

Α. There’s a roller thing and it’s got purple dye on it, and you run the sheet through with a template and you have to crank out the copy. So, that’s when I first started here.

The first classroom I ever taught in was 113 in the old 1950s wing. I arrived at a time when the school was on its way up, in terms of so many students and so much going on. It already had a great reputation, but there were also so many people who impacted my career and my vocation. I looked up to them and they eventually became lifelong friends. The kind of students whom we had here and the kind of programming we had here just all spoke to my soul, and so, I was hooked.

Q. What would be the one thing I would change about dress code? (muses)

A. I would like the dress code to be less about a list of things you couldn’t wear and more about an attitude. If it was my call I would say, “Dress like you are going to work, where you respect the people around you. So, you are not wearing anything that is hateful. Dress like you want to make this a better community.” When I first started, it was spiked bracelets and nose-piercings and multi-coloured hair. To me, none of that is offensive or bad.