Yippee-Ki-Ai-Yay!

Ah, spring!  The flowers, the searing heat, the wildfires.  The job interviews.

Not being all *that* satisfied with working for the music education equivalent WalMart, I will be hitting the interview trail yet again this year.  Not that this will lead to anything worthwhile; it never has before.  For mine is a rare talent: I am everybody's second choice for their teaching job.

Being the bridesmaid and never the bride means I have serious experience with the dog-and-pony show private school interview.  Whether it is far away (like the all-expenses paid 48 hour trip to Florida) or close to home, the routine is same.  Spend the day on campus, talk with everyone and his cousin, teach a demonstration lesson, and then go home and wait two weeks for the rejection letter/call/email.

I've done dozens of these interviews over the last 10 years.  (Not counting the public school ones; that's another post.)  It doesn't take me long to decide whether the school would be worth working for. Usually about 10 minutes is enough. 

Take this gem from six months ago.  It wasn't a school I was all that excited about to begin with.  They are obviously a dysfunctional revolving-door.  Every spring they list 6-8 openings, in addition to multiple vacancies during the school year.  Any school with that kind of turn over is one to run away from fast -- really fast. I nearly cancelled the interview.  But I'm not the kind of person who bails on her commitments, so I rose early in the morning, drove 50 miles and showed up on time...

...to wait in the lobby for 20 minutes.  Nothing shows professionalism like making the interviewee sit around twiddling her thumbs.  It turns out this was a preview of the rest of the morning.  I sat twiddling my thumbs in a religious service (it's a religious school), I sat twiddling my thumbs in a music classroom, I sat twiddling my thumbs in an administrator's office.  Oh yeah, these guys were real interested in hiring me.

The music class was a clinic in how not to teach.  These kids did nothing but play around with the keyboards and computers for 45 minutes.  The "teacher" proudly told me how these "music centers" worked and how he presented this concept at a national music educators conference.  (Good, another reason not to join NAfME.)  I worked on my acting skills by feigning interest and enthusiasm, while observing the total lack of teaching, learning, and classroom management.  These kids were literally doing whatever they wanted, including talk to their friends in the corner.

By the time I got to teach, the only thing on my mind was where to go for lunch.  Needless to say my insistence on student participation, focus on quality music making, and lack of toys to play with did not go over well with the over-stimulated, spoiled students.

Thankfully, I never heard from the school again.