Naming your School

It might seem ridiculous, but it took A LOT of thought before we decided on Dave and Amy English School as THE name for our school.       

At first, Green Gopher, Purple Panda, Mauve Marsupial were deliberated on because there were similarly named local schools.   

Then, the ubiquitous Rainbow English, Sunny Seas English were briefly considered.   

Next, a different slant.   Why not Liverpool “Alright La?” English? Texas Yeeha! Academy?   Those ideas quickly found their way into the wastebasket. 

DnA, our nickname amongst our friends was finally chosen.  But later we found people would openly laugh when we told them the name of our school and asked if it was a scientific laboratory!

Finally, we settled on Dave and Amy.   Not cool, but original.   Yes, you heard right.  Original.   You / we ARE original.   I’m quite certain we’re the only Dave and Amy English School in Japan.    

We settled on our names for a number of reasons:

1.   At first, we WERE the ONLY teachers.  We were selling ourselves / our lessons/ our teaching style.    
2.   We were halfway well known already thanks to our monthly discos.   (albeit a different crowd from the child English school market.   Although we do have former disco diva kids at our school).   And from living in the same area for 15 years.

We recommend using your name if you are starting out small.    YOU are the school.     You’re the main teacher:  the driving force behind the school.     It worked well for Cadburys, Heinz, Adidas, McDonalds etc.   Why not you?

An added benefit: you use can your appealing cartoon face on advertisements and signs.    Faces attract:  maybe even yours!.   

 Maybe you fear naming the school after yourself because:

1.   Students will only want to be taught by you.    Fear not, if your teachers are well trained and professional, students will be FINE not seeing you.     In fact, students might prefer the other teachers to you.      We rotate our teachers every 4 months.    Students don’t expect to be taught by us.

1.   You won’t be able to sell the school.   Don’t worry about selling it.    That’s in the distant future.   If you’ve built up a good business, you will be able to sell.   

How about you?    What did you name your school and why?

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Want to know more?

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• Indecisive Moms
• Kid life in Japan