Clara Brown’s approach to her job includes fostering an environment where people show respect for others. That might apply to any position that involves managing people, but the Georgetown native prefers the job she has now, teaching second graders at Wiscasset Primary School, over the corporate one she once held.

In Smithfield, Rhode Island, Brown managed a 24-hour fitness facility with six employees and 600 members. She took the job after working her first two years after college in Regional School Unit 1 in Bath as a behavior and academic aide, and long-term substitute teacher in fifth grade at Fisher-Mitchell School.

In 2012, with no classroom of her own yet, she moved to Rhode Island and into the gym manager’s job.

But Brown would come to realize that something was missing: the students, and the sense of accomplishment she got from working with them.

“Kids make every day fresh, “ she said in her classroom at the primary school on Sept. 5. “And you leave here every day feeling that there was some good that came out of that day.

“Being in the corporate world made me realize how awesome it is to be a classroom teacher.”

Brown is back living in Georgetown; she hasn’t totally left the world of commerce, however. She owns and runs Overlook at the Point, a summer vacation rental and wedding venue in Georgetown.

“It’s ideal,” she said about having a seasonal business when school’s out for the summer.

Brown has 15 students in her second grade class. “It’s a great (class) size ... I’m getting to know their different personalities,” she said.

Brown, 26, graduated from East Carolina University in North Carolina in 2010.