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Hiring the Second Native Teacher

The full-time native teacher I first hired, Mr. M, helped me out a lot when interviewing new teachers. He would select the capable candidates from the applicants, and conduct phone interviews before my actual in-person interviews.

ABC’s second full-time native teacher was a Mexican American — Mr. E. I strongly believe that first impressions are important when interviewing someone. But I couldn’t be there when Mr. E first came in for his interview because I had an appointment with the loan company concerning the new classroom I was about to build. I was disappointed I couldn’t see him when he first arrived to ABC.

His interactions with the children were not bad, so I decided to hire him on a 3-month trial period. Things seemed to go smoothly in the beginning.

But a problem occurred after 2 months. One day, after we had the students play in the park, Mr. M suddenly ran straight to me. “A student who was within eyesight of Mr. E tried to run out of the park, but Mr. E just watched and only used words to try and stop the student. Mr. E didn’t move to stop the child. I noticed and ran to stop the student.” claimed Mr. M. I asked the Japanese assistant who was there and she said it was true.

Afterwards, I spoke with Mr. E and asked him about the situation. He replied with a different story saying that he was the one who ran and stopped the child from running out of the park. When I told him that the story I heard from the assistant was different, he said, “Oh, you’ve heard it already?”
Unfortunately, he lied to me.

We are responsible for protecting the children’s lives. I’m sure Mr. E acknowledged the extent of the situation and that’s probably why he lied. But I could not accept this and I had to ask him to leave after his 3-month trial period.

Again I had to start looking for new teachers.

Throughout the years, I have had a variety of teachers working at ABC. But I’m especially grateful for Mr. M who laid the base of ABC.

A few years later, Ms. S joined ABC. She played an extremely important roll in building the second stage of ABC. She always stayed at my side and now she has grown to be a great mother of 3 beautiful children. It is quite lonely being a manager, but her support helped me a lot.

I couldn’t have built my school into what it is today without the support from Mr. M and Ms. S.

ABC’s History continues in Part 10!

日本語ではこちらへ。