History of the School
The school was founded in the year 1985 by Dr. Deepak Arora and his German wife Silvia Anna Maria Wieczorek. The name of the school “Ann Mary” is a part of the maiden name of Mrs. Arora. Anna and Maria (Ann and Mary) were the names of the two grandmothers of Mrs. Arora. Just before the school began, she inherited a nominal amount of money from these two good souls, and these funds were also used to build the school. Considering their kindness and the easy pronunciation of Ann Mary (A for Ann and M for Maria) for the children they decided to call the school Ann Mary.
Dr. Deepak Arora was born in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India. He grew up in Dehradun and did his schooling at St. Joseph’s Academy completing his Senior Cambridge in 1966. Thereafter, he did his graduation from Delhi University and proceeded to then West Germany for further studies.
He did his Master’s in Education and English from Germany’s famous and oldest University at Heidelberg. He also completed his Ph.D. in education from the same university.
He taught at the Teacher Training College in Heidelberg and Freiherr Vom Stein Schule in Neckarsteinach in Germany before returning to India in 1983 as a research fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) New Delhi. He joined the Doon School as a part-time German teacher in 1984 and taught there for 27 long years till March 2011. He taught German at ICSE, ISC, and IB Levels. Currently, he devotes all his time and attention to Ann Mary School where he holds the position of Principal.
Silvia Anna Maria Wieczorek was born in the city of Gruenstadt in South Germany. She completed her schooling from the Geschwister Scholl Gymnasium in the industrial town of Ludwigshafen/Rhein and did her masters in Education from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
She worked as a teacher in a kindergarten and as a special educator training college in Heidelberg for several years before resigning there to set sail for the Indian adventure. She holds the post of Director of Education and is an accomplished Yoga teacher at Ann Mary School.
Ann Mary School started with a small group of nine play class children on the 1st of April 1985. The land for this purpose had been purchased earlier and a modest tin shed structure was built mostly with used materials, due to lack of funds, provided the initial start. The school evolved and grew at a slow and steady pace from kindergarten to senior secondary (Class XII). Today the school can easily be counted as one of the jewels in the crown of top schools in this school city of India.
