Phill
- 2010-06-14
hi everyone , i am totally desappointed with that APH and Okada .., at the beginning , she pretends to have many students , with stufs ect .. but when the time goes , i found out that almost no one there aprat from herself , and the number of student is getting fewer day by day , by now i think at most 10 students in that institute . She pretends to be very inteligent ,while since the first time i found out that there is smthg wrong in her brain . she accuses some ppl to abuse her secretely .... whenever someone stands next to her doo ( even to read flyer ) she always presume that the person is listening to her conversation , and whenever something is lost or she just cant find it , she always accuses staff , and she doesnt have any willigness to pay your salary , she always try to find out some reason ,even try to invent something to skip some amount , really terrible old lady . so is better to really think alot bfore going there now that she is really in need of teacher .
Canarianazucena
- 2008-08-28
Well, I worked for APH too, and I didn't want to take part of this discussion until today. I agree about what Dan and Usagi so all I can say is the same they already said. But now, because I see that there are many people deffending APH with false arguments, I think I need to write some lines and express the following:
1. Well it's false that "APH teaches 15 languages and employs many teachers". Ms Okada intends to teach 15 languages but she has many troubles to find teachers because her character and working conditions, so if you ask her about lessons in Russian, she will probably regret to tell you they can't teach you. She has not more than 3 teachers working for her and not more than 10 lessons per week, most of them on Saturdays. Okada's customer list is really slim.
2. It's funny to heard that "she invites you to her events". Definitely not. She doesn't "invite" you: She FORCE you to attend the events (Halloween parties, etc.). If you don't attend them, you are fired, and she doesn't pay teachers to attend those events.
3. When I signed a contract with her, she warned me many time that "I wrote this conditions to avoid some troubles I had with some teachers in the past". So it seems that not every teachers were satisfied with APH and Okada. And Okada seems to be very conscious of it.
4. I don't know about that "nice atmosphere": the school was always empty, with no teachers and no students. And no secretaries, because it's true what Dan said: Okada loved firing Japanese secretaries. APH resisted from 1970 because Okada must have better business or she is millionaire, because it's obvious she is not living from APH.
5. APH website is full of pictures that belongs to other schools and institutions and Okada is using them illegally (most of them belong to Hyogo International Plaza official website and they have the rights to use those images). She never updates the website: in the teachers' list you can see there are four teachers: none of them are currently working at APH. One of them is Daniel (Dan), and another one is me. Can we still thing Okada is sophisticated and elegant with that kind of website?
That's all I had to say.
Thanks
B
- 2008-08-27
I have also worked for APH for several years and Ms Okada was an elegant, sophisticated and intelligent woman.
I believe APH was established sometime in the 1970s. If Ms Okada is as bad as "Dan" and "Usagi" says, she would not be able to run the school for so long. APH teaches many languages (around 15?) and therefore employs many teachers, but I have not heard any dissatisfaction from other teachers. Well, all the teachers were quite nice there, making the school atmosphere nice. For me, it was a great place to work; nice staff, students and employer!
Ralph
- 2008-08-27
To whom it may concern:
I have known Ms Okada for several years and worked at APH in Himeji, teaching there without having a single negative incident.
All this here puzzles me and from my side I can not affirm that I have experimented any of these things.
On the contrary, Ms Okada was always kind and helpful. She has invited me to events, shared many good moments of fun and in general hasn't behaved at all the way it's written here.
I do hope this is all a misunderstanding, and that her name and APH will not be damaged by all this.
Thank you for your understanding.
Kobe, Aug 2008
Usagi
- 2008-08-04
I 100% agree with this comment. AHP is still a real hell for language teachers, three years after the message I am replying was written. The president of this school has a scary psychotic profile and a low rate of emotional intelligence. She is an old woman whose name I omit despite it can be found in the official website of this school, which it has not been updated in two years: for example the four teachers who are in the website are not currently working for AHP, because they probably ran away from there, same as me.
Fortunately, I just needed two working days to discover that the lady who runs the school is the problem in that school and she only pretends to trick the teacher.
I was contracted as a teacher of Spanish (I am a Spanish native speaker), French and English. For me it was incredible that she wanted me to teach English and French, because in Japan native speakers are always preferred, but that's because her attitude does not let her find right teachers. She even wanted me to teach Italian just because it's so close to Spanish, despite I never learned Italian.
In the original contract, she wrote she would pay me 12,000 yen per worked day and she offered me an appartment. The appartment is another trick: AVOID IT! She is just interested on you not as a teacher, but as a guest who rents her house. She offers a few lessons to you but the first day she asks you to pay 120,000 yen (60,000 yen for the monthly rent plus a 60,000 yen deposit). She is not interested in your profile as a teacher, because she never asks you for your diplomas or certificates to prove you are a real teacher: I showed my MA, master in Spanish language teaching and my employment letters to prove my experience and professional background but she did not show a big interest, because for her "papers are not important, the only important thing is to trust each other, this is the normal way in Japan". She acted according to her beliefs and she refused to give me a copy of my contracts (working and leasing) but she warned me that both were linked, so if I decided to quit her appartment and move, I should quit the school too!
The contract she prepared for me was for three years but she was not interested on my visa situation. I just told her I had a spouse visa but she didn't ask me for my passport to check if what I was telling her was true.
I insisted to have a copy of my contract so yesterday she finally did it, although she was very ungry and nervous because she "you don't trust in me", she said. Surprisingly she had added some notes with ballpen to the original contract after I had signed it. For example, she added that a working day means 8 hours, so any work of less than 8 hours means that the teacher is paid per hours. So that's a trick: you can spend the whole day with her, being her emotional handkerchief, but if you just had one hour lesson, she just pays you 1,500 yen!
She still insisted that trust is first, but I replied that I can't trust on somebody who add notes to a contract after it has been signed by both parts, so I kindly ask her to break the contract and return my 120,000 yen for the rent. She cried and repeated again her naif philosophy of confidence, but finally accepted and gave my money back, while she destroyed the contract.
I must say that it has been the worst working experience in my life and of course this is a very rare exception in Japan, a country where contracts are clear and confidence is important, of course, but it must be always accompanied by the proper documents.
So you are warned. If you intend to work for AHP and her emotionally unstable president, think about it twice!