Vale Anne Gordon

At the end of March 2020, our Box Hill High School community lost the kind, intelligent, articulate, funny, beautiful and compassionate educator, Anne Gordon. 

Anne, who had inspired students and staff in many schools since 1972, arrived at Box Hill High School in 2010. She spent decades doing what she loved. Her love of learning, her warm smile and her compassion will be missed by everybody who knew her. 

Following are tributes to Anne from some of our staff members.

When Anne and I spoke about her eulogy, we talked about how it is a form of story-telling, where we attempt to weave the tapestry of someone’s life and in doing so, we also highlight how the threads of their life are connected and run through the fabric of all those people who loved them.  

I will always think of Anne as the colour of gardens in Autumn; all oranges, reds, deep golds and olive greens. The little part of Anne’s tapestry, which I have the honour of speaking about today, is her life as a teacher. And the qualities she brought to her teaching were her ability to connect with students and colleagues, her unwavering commitment to learning, her optimism and enthusiasm for the people around her, her dry wit and her frank honesty.  

I could speak about Anne’s strengths as a teacher, and the way that she inspired me and others to be better for hours. Instead I wanted to offer you a few little glimpses of the moments which show her approach and her impact. 

When working at Rowville, the Principal told her that they were going to have a staff meeting dedicated to the idea that teaching is all about relationships. When Anne relayed this story to me, many years later, she was still shocked that some teachers needed this fact spelled out to them. In Anne’s opinion you couldn’t separate relationships from teaching, which is why her students loved her. She showed her commitment to their learning by proving her commitment to them. She always got to know them as individuals. This was evident to everyone in our staff room at the end of each year when Anne received the most cards, letters, emails, gifts and hugs from her students and often from their parents too.  

I remember when I was a graduate teacher, Anne telling me of a student she’d taught many years earlier who had such a horrible home life that he was always exhausted and falling asleep in her class. Her solution was to find a quiet room in the school where he could sleep instead of coming to her class. As a graduate, I admit I was naïve and shocked “What about his education?!” Anne laughed at me and explained. “What education is he getting when he’s bone tired every day? And how embarrassing to be so tired that you fall asleep in front of your peers every lesson.” By letting him sleep during her class, Anne showed him that she cared about him as a person. She also ensured that he was rested enough to stay awake for the rest of the school day. Anne taught me to look at my students with new eyes. Where I had only seen a student, she had seen a person first and foremost.   

Anne took the same caring approach with her colleagues, and in particular graduates and new staff. She always made sure to say hello to them in the staff room and find out a bit about them. She was always looking for those moments of connection and then to how she could help them settle into this career that she loved. Anne adopted more graduates and student teachers than anyone I’ve known. Again, when the student teachers would finish up at the end of semester, Anne would always receive a card or two and I’d be astonished thinking, I didn’t even realise she had met them! 

One of the reasons she was such a great mentor, to me and to so many teachers at Box Hill, was because of her optimism and enthusiasm but also because of her fearless honesty. Anne wouldn’t sugar coat the truth. If you asked her for her opinion, she gave it. And in the middle of a staff meeting, even if everyone else had just been nodding along with something, when Anne raised her hand you knew there would be something wise, valuable and probably very forthright about to come your way. She always brought the conversation back to what the students needed. And it was usually delivered with her dry wit and a twinkle in her eye.  

If I picture all of Anne’s remarkable qualities as those threads of orange, reds, deep golds and olive green I know that I will be seeing those threads through the rest of my life. They run through my own teaching, I see them through so many of my colleagues, I see them in the hundreds of students who Anne taught. Knowing Anne has made me a better teacher and a better person. I feel so blessed for all of the beautiful colours she brought into my life. Thank you, Anne. 

- Ms Erin Gleeson 

My very first memory of meeting Anne was when she brought a class of Year 7 students to the library. I had not long started at Box Hill High School and she radiated such warmth that I knew that I wanted to get to know her. During the following hour I watched her interactions with the students in her care. She was so compassionate, so friendly and she knew her students, like, she really knew them. I also observed senior students actively approach her to talk about work and their general life. It was so obvious that Anne was one of those educators whose impact on those lucky enough to have her as their teacher was profound. 

As I got to know her, I came to realise how she was able to leave such a powerful impact on the students in her care. When I spoke to Anne, she really listened and always made me feel like she had nowhere else to be. She was a fabulous storyteller. She had the ability to speak and captivate her audience so that you wanted to listen to her. Perhaps this is because her stories were always recipes of knowledge, compassion, empathy and an awareness of audience. Anne had an incredible knowledge about how to build relationships; how to nurture students so that they could recognise and achieve their potential. Anne was articulate, informed and balanced in her views and she wasn’t afraid to stand behind her ideas. She challenged me to think differently and Anne was able to do this all so naturally. I am sure that is why people gravitated to her. 

When she got sick she was so adamant that she did not want to die. She wasn’t ready to die from this really awful and insidious disease. She was feisty and driven, she was brave and stoic and resilient. I am so thankful that I was able to get to know this remarkable woman. And I will really miss her warm smile, her witty sense of humour and our chats about gardening, chickens and her most passionate subject, teaching.

Thank you for your beautiful friendship. Thank you for sharing your time, your wisdom, your stories and your passion for teaching with me. I will miss you. 

- Ms Kylie Pearson 

I met Anne in my first year of teaching, when she unofficially became my mentor. She had a true passion for language and for helping all her students, particularly the tough ones who she never gave up on. She sat with me for countless free periods going over the course work and making sure I felt confident teaching new topics. Her absolute belief in me was so valuable as a beginning teacher and I still feel its influence today. She would sit there and say “Of course you can” whenever I expressed any doubt or “See, I knew you knew what you were doing” when I made suggestions for schemes of work. I remember how much effort she put into really getting to know her students, taking EAL classes to have a BBQ in the local park because she wanted them to experience Australia, or sitting with Year 12s helping them draft their creative essays. Anne never wanted attention for the work she did or praise for the kindness and warmth she brought to the English department, which were balanced only by her dry sense of humour. Sitting at her old desk now, I feel incredibly lucky to have had Anne in my early years of teaching. 

- Ms Amy London

Students and teachers at Box Hill High School knew Anne as an inspirational English teacher. At other schools, however, she had also worked as a passionate German teacher. The German department benefited greatly from her language skills when Anne helped to cover German lessons on short notice. Her experience as a German teacher sparked many insightful conversations about an engaging German curriculum. Many teachers at Box Hill High School can speak German to varying degrees and to celebrate this skill the German faculty organised a German Conversation Group for teachers. Anne became an asset to the group and entertained us with many delightful and witty conversations in German.

- Ms Jana Kuehn 

I first met Anne as my mentor teacher when an administrative error placed me at Box Hill High School for teaching rounds in 2011. We clicked so instantly that when the university offered to fix their mistake, I begged them to let me stay. I knew it was a rare and wonderful thing to have been given the opportunity to be mentored by someone so wise and intuitive. 

Anne taught for many years in a huge range of contexts and never came across a student she could not speak lovingly of. When telling me about a student who once threw a hammer at her head, she smiled and sighed – remembering some quality in that child’s character or an aspect of their situation that made it impossible to blame them for their actions. 

Anne was in her element when she was taking to her colleagues about the need to approach all students with love and understanding, so much so that she was frequently asked to share her insights with the staff cohort. She took genuine pleasure in reading the work her students submitted, particularly the creative writing assignments and was energised by any lesson that produced robust and lively discussion. Anne was proud of her nurturing instincts and took any opportunity that came her way to mentor younger teachers or offer support to students in need. 

We knew Anne was sick when she suddenly felt like she couldn’t keep teaching any longer. This vibrant, energetic educator who had never in her four decades of teaching felt her enthusiasm for the job lessen, started to dread coming to school in the morning. The change was so drastic that it prompted her to see medical advice, and the cancer was found. That we both inherently knew something was seriously wrong speaks to the utter devotion and love Anne had for her teaching career. She had faced many other challenges in earlier years but none had been able to affect her in this way. Still, she spent as much of her time teaching, post diagnosis as possible. She knew that to her, making the most of her last years on Earth meant being in a school teaching the students she adored and supporting the teachers of the future who would continue her legacy. What more could Box Hill High School possibly have asked for in a member of their community? 

We are all lucky to have known Anne, and to have existed in her orbit for these past years. 

- Ms Anna Muston