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Anne Pönisch a UWC Atlantic Alumna 1967 -1969
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Anne Pönisch

Nine women and 250 boys: Anne's Atlantic College story

I came to Atlantic College in 1967 from a very Victorian girls' boarding school in South Wales and the contrast could not have been more complete.

Atlantic College was eager to admit girls for the first time, and I arrived with eight other intrepid, brave women to find ourselves sharing a campus with 250 boys. It was exciting, frightening and fascinating all at once. We were the first, an experiment if you like and the local newspapers loved us for it,  we were feted for those first couple of months. Then the hard work began and we all quietly settled into college life.

Looking back, everything that came after for me is really Atlantic College's fault.

I joined the social service unit at AC and it was there that my direction took shape. I wasn't a great sportswoman,  I loved the sea, but only for swimming, so I threw myself into community work instead. I worked alongside a local secondary school with children who had learning difficulties. In those days, provision for special needs was almost non-existent. I remember visiting one boy at home, helping him with his reading, building something week by week. That experience planted a seed that never stopped growing.

Anne Pönisch a UWC Atlantic Alumna 1967 -1969

After graduating, I went into teaching and then specialised in special educational needs. An early post took me to Vienna, where I joined an international school and built a special education unit from scratch, something virtually unheard of in international schools at the time. I went back to university, trained in school governance and administration, became a head teacher and spent the next 40 years moving around the world from one international school to the next, dragging my children along with me. Exciting? Absolutely.

I'm 75 now, and what I feel most is a fierce determination to keep learning, keep enjoying life, and keep getting passionately annoyed at the things that need changing. That fire never goes. I think that's what UWC Atlantic left me with.

My life has stayed intertwined with Atlantic College in the most wonderful way. I met Herbert Pönisch from Austria at AC and we got married and had two boys. In fact our sons, Dylan and Simon, both came to AC as students too. Dylan went on to marry Fiona who he also met at Atlantic College and her three brothers and sisters all came here as well. So we have become, in the best possible way, a rather wonderfully incestuous Atlantic College family with alumni connections that take us all over the world.

It all started with nine women, 250 boys and a leap into the unknown and I wouldn't change a moment of it.

Anne Lloyd Thomas (Class of 1969) went on to have a 40-year career in international education, specialising in special educational needs. Now retired, she lives in West Wales but stays connected to UWC Atlantic though attending events and as an alumni has connections stretching across the global UWC community.

What did a UWC education give me? An open-minded view of the world, for one. A sense of humour - because you learn quickly that things take time to change. And a remarkable, instant connection with anyone else who has been to a UWC school or college. You just hit the ground running with them, wherever you meet them.