One Woman’s Boarding School Experience Across Three Generations
Anne Marie Taber’s connection to Olney didn’t start with her own enrollment. She was born to Quaker parents who had both attended and worked at the school. Growing up in the small rural town of Barnesville, surrounded by a local economy largely built on farming, Olney was simply part of the landscape of her childhood. A lot of her family’s fellow Quakers were farmers too, and the school pulled students from Quaker communities across the state and region.
By the time Anne Marie was old enough to think about high school, there wasn’t much of a question. “I always knew that I would go to this school,” she says.
Finding Acceptance in the 1970s
Anne Marie graduated from Olney in 1979, a period defined by the tail end of the Vietnam War. The school’s Quaker identity was evident in how students were supported during that time.
Quakers have a long history of pacifism, and Olney encouraged students to write papers on their personal, spiritual, and ideological opposition to war in case they were ever called up for the draft.
That documentation gave students a foundation for seeking conscientious objector status if it ever came to that.
But what Anne Marie remembers most from her own boarding school experience wasn’t the politics of the era. It was how it felt to be known. “I felt more accepted for who I was than I ever felt at the public schools in town,” she says. She’s quick to add that she believes strongly in public education, but it simply wasn’t the right environment for her. Olney gave her room to be herself while she was still figuring out who that was.
Two Sons, Two Different Paths
Decades later, Anne Marie found herself on the other side of the relationship, as an Olney parent. Her two sons both attended the school, and their experiences didn’t look the same. One left before graduating, after making choices that led to that outcome, something Anne Marie describes as a hard but important lesson for him. The other stayed all four years, graduated, and went on to college.
Watching her own children move through Olney gave her a different vantage point on the school than she’d had as a student.
She could see the intellectual freedom, the encouragement, and also the real rules and boundaries in place, and she watched how the school handled both the successes and the harder moments with her family.
From Librarian to Dean of Learning
Anne Marie officially joined Olney’s staff in 2010, after having mostly raised her family and completed her professional training. She’d been working as a university librarian in North Carolina, cataloging electronic resources, when a librarian position opened up at Olney. Her youngest son was a student there at the time, and the timing felt right. “I liked the thought of giving back,” she says.
What started as a librarian role has grown considerably since then. Anne Marie now serves as Dean of Learning, overseeing curriculum, supervising teachers, and managing evaluations and grading. She also still works as the school’s librarian, teaches health, and occasionally teaches the Quakerism course that gives students context for the school’s history and values. At various points she’s coached yoga and folk dance as well.
She describes her sixteen years on staff as an extension of the same instinct that shaped her boarding school experience as a student: a desire to serve the people who come through Olney’s doors.
She uses the word “minister” deliberately here, not in a religious sense exactly, but in the sense of showing up for people with care and attention. “The way that we minister is to take care of the people that come through our doors,” she explains, “and help them to learn what they need to learn to be an ethical human in today’s world.”
What’s Changed, and What Hasn’t
Anne Marie has watched Olney shift in real ways since her own time as a student. The school became independent from its founding yearly meeting in the late 1990s, moving from church governance to an independent Board of Trustees. That change gave Olney more room to serve students of any religious background rather than requiring alignment with a particular Christian tradition.
But some things have stayed remarkably consistent. Anne Marie describes the shift this way: Olney started out as a sheltered education for Quaker children, and it’s become a sheltered Quaker education for all children. The sheltering itself hasn’t disappeared. It’s just broadened to protect students from a wider range of pressures, whether in public or private schools.
Part of that shelter comes from Olney’s remote, rural setting. It’s not for everyone, and Anne Marie acknowledges it can be a drawback in some ways. But she also sees real value in a campus surrounded by woods, open sky, and farmland, away from the kinds of temptations and pressures that are more common in a city setting.
Why Faculty Stay Invested After Graduation
Ask Anne Marie what stands out most about working at Olney, and she comes back to the relationships. Everyone who works at the school and most students who attend end up caring deeply about each other by the time a student graduates.
There are professional boundaries, of course, but the connection with students is real. Anne Marie put it simply: “We miss them when they’re gone.”
Part of why that happens comes down to the setup at Olney. Small classes mean teachers see the same kids constantly, not just for one period a day. Meals happen together; there’s just more contact, more chances to actually know someone rather than just teach them a subject. Anne Marie has watched that play out with a whole new group of students over the years, including her own kids at one point, and she says it’s been one of the best parts of working here.
She’s getting close to retirement now, thinking about what comes next, but she’s not rushing toward the door. “I’m grateful for having the opportunity to contribute to the life of the school,” she says, “and all of the students that I have grown to care for very much.”
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