In December last year, Ann Maguire gave an interview to the newsletter at Corpus Christi, where she had spent her entire teaching career. “I never wanted to leave here,” she said, just two terms before she was due to retire after 40 years at the Catholic school. To do a job for so long you have to love children, she said: “Children are fascinating. Every child is different. You have to adapt your approach to each one, tuning in with their needs and encouraging them to aspire.”
Even as a young child, she wanted to be a teacher. Growing up in Wigan, the third child of Mary and James Connor, it was always her dream. She caught the Spanish-speaking bug from Miss Penny, her favourite teacher at her Lancashire grammar school, and in 1971 she crossed the Pennines and came to Leeds to study at Trinity and All Saints (now Leeds Trinity University). Though everyone later agreed she was a natural teacher, it did not come easily to her at first. According to her nephew Andrew, she used to cry in the toilets with another trainee teacher at the start, dreading standing in front of a class of surly teenagers.
Andrew and his brother Daniel thought of Ann as their mother. In 1986 they moved up to Leeds to join their family after their own mother, Ann’s sister, died. These two small boys, confused and distraught, were welcomed into the family by Ann and her husband, Don, even though their own two children were then very young.
Kerry and Emma, her daughters were both were talented ballet dancers who won places at the Royal Ballet School in London. Their success was a wrench for their mother, who made the M1 her second home while they studied in the capital, visiting her homesick girls as often as she could, often marking a pile of Spanish homework on the way back to Leeds. Emma is now a soloist with the Royal Ballet, while her sister is an osteopath in Ilkley.
At her memorial service in Leeds in September, pupils and teachers from Corpus Christi told how Ann always went the extra mile. She was often the last person left in the school when the caretaker came to lock up, and would think nothing of driving a child home or taking them for something to eat if she worried they would go hungry. It was remarkable, said Daniel at the service, how Ann found time to build personal relationships with so many people.
“By far the most valuable thing you gave us was your time,” he said. “There was never an occasion when you didn’t go the extra mile – and then 20 more – for any of us. There was never a time when you didn’t have time. And I think that’s why so many people are here today. Because they know you went the extra mile for them too, at some point. Maybe it was a five-minute chat or extra help with homework; a shoulder to cry on, some words of encouragement, an unexpected visit or a night of singing until the early hours. We all delivered our problems on to your shoulders, thinking you were an indestructible force who never let us down.”
Though she was just 5ft 3in, to her nephew she was “10ft tall and made of steel” with “the heart of a lioness”.
Ann thought of herself as having four children. When they were little, all four would pile into one bed so that she could read to them – The Secret Seven, The Magic Faraway Tree, anything by Roald Dahl. On Sunday afternoons they would cuddle up on the sofa and watch Little House on the Prairie, a particular favourite – Andrew said she loved these stories of innocence, childhood fun and adventure, people overcoming terrible loss. When Emma went off to ballet school, Ann would record tapes of herself reading from Pride and Prejudice for her to listen to if she was missing home. When Kerry was little and could not sleep, Ann would scoop her out of bed and take her downstairs to bake cakes. She was often up late, sewing her daughters’ dance costumes, or preparing for the next day in school.
Music was a big passion. She will live on in the memory of hundreds of her students wielding a battered old guitar with a rainbow strap, strumming along with a plectrum she had fashioned out of a margarine tub lid. She loved the Beatles and Carole King and was able to cajole even the most reluctant pupil to join her choir. “I did sometimes wonder if you should have been a famous folk singer yourself and have your name up in lights and entertain huge numbers of people,” said Andrew, in a letter he wrote to Ann after her death and read at her memorial. “The fact was you were so humble that even the thought of singing solo would have you hiding to the corner of the room, shying away from the attention.”
Her Catholic faith was at the heart of all she did. As a girl she joined the Legion of Mary, a Catholic voluntary organisation, and visited the elderly and the housebound. As an adult she believed passionately in the power of prayer.
“Ann didn’t just pass on knowledge,” said Monsignor John Wilson in the homily at her memorial. “She gave herself, her beautiful personality, her steadfast belief that each student could and should achieve their best. Her personal values of faith and friendship. Her distinctive warmth … She believed in the innate goodness of children and young people. She nurtured them in her wonder. She challenged them in their apathy and she accompanied them in their struggles. For her, educating the whole person was a journey of adventure.”
