u/protomanEXE1995

So I'm a teacher. There's a kid in one of my classes who plays guitar, he's like 12, and recently he's been getting into Whitesnake and related bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, etc. He asked me if I listened to Whitesnake or Sabbath, and I told him I'd seen both live. He thought that was so cool, and said he loved David Coverdale. His favorite of the guitarists is Steve Vai, and I told him he should check out Bernie Marsden's work with WS. Then I asked him if he'd ever listened to any of Coverdale's material from before Whitesnake.

He said no. I pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote down,

>Deep Purple albums w/ David Coverdale

>-Burn

>-Stormbringer

>-Come Taste the Band

And the kid's jaw dropped. He was excited, and never knew Coverdale was in Deep Purple. He said he's going to go check out all 3 of these albums this weekend.

Never thought I'd be able to share '70s music with my middle schoolers. Every time any of them hear music coming from my computer, they usually cringe. It was a fun moment.

So I currently work as a CTE/technology elective teacher at a public middle school in a high income area. While I’m getting to know people, which is great, I honestly feel a bit out of my element with this population, as I grew up in a much more ethnically diverse area, during the Great Recession, with friends who were really up against it financially. This school, in contrast, has extremely few students of color and the average income of the parents is quite high. The students like me, but sometimes I hear the things they say and it reminds me that this is the spoiled, rich kid area.

Unfortunately, I was non-renewed over budgetary issues with the county. Even though my principal wants to keep me, he’s losing not only me, but the entire tech program.

Silver lining: There is a teaching vacancy for the same tech courses I currently teach at another school in my district. This one is much closer to where I live, and I even attended it 20 years ago. The student population is much more diverse, lining up with the environment in which I described growing up. I had an interview yesterday with the principal, and while he said he’s willing to have another discussion with me (yay!) it was a bit rocky.

We hit a snag early in the interview when he asked me about how I’ve been teaching my class. My principal, when I was hired, had emphasized to me that his #1 priority was introducing structure into this course, because the previous teacher (retiring veteran teacher) was really checked out, and the environment wasn’t exactly safe or conducive to learning. Too much mischief and not enough attention was being paid to the horseplay.

I’ve been addressing that with more structured lessons and instructional time rather than tons of exploratory time. Admin is happy with what I’ve done. The kids are too, especially the ones who had the old teacher before.

The principal I interviewed with was a bit put off by this because he thinks the exploratory time allows students to decompress from lecture-heavy core classes and dive deeply into the subjects which interest them. Unfortunately, most of the students in my class didn’t want to be placed there to begin with. Tech/STEM isn’t interesting to them.

He doesn’t think that classes should have no structure, but he is averse to over-structuring. He made it clear that he does think elective classes should be light on the structure/lessons and mostly “student led.”

He also led me to believe that the sort of teacher he’d be looking for would be able to work with a more diverse population of students, and perhaps what works at my school wouldn’t work at his. I tried to convey that he’s describing a student population I’d feel *more* comfortable with, not less, but I think I failed to convey that.

I have 3 questions for this sub:

1. how normal is it that the electives at a public middle school are loaded down with kids who hate the subject? In an elective class period of 35 kids, I maybe have 5 who care.

2. This principal clearly has a different philosophy toward teaching than my current principal, and I’m a bit nervous about the transition from one approach to another. I’m staring down the barrel of unemployment and this job is the only position I’ve received an interview for, so unfortunately I’m not in a position to be super choosy. We’re likely going to have another interview soon, and I want him to know that I’m willing to do what is necessary to meet the needs of this school. How do I convey that?

3. I don’t expect him to offer me the job, but if he does, how do I run the classroom in a way that would satisfy him? He seemed unimpressed with my experience, and I’m getting the feeling that the only reason I’m being called back is because it’s hard to staff those CTE roles.

I never asked a teacher something like that.