Weird Interview Experience

A few years ago, I was a middle school theatre arts teacher. Long story short, admin was awful, I became clinically depressed, and I left. Last year, I didn’t step foot into a school at all. This year, I’m subbing but a position opened up in a neighboring district for Assistant Tech Theatre Teacher. I applied and had an interview yesterday morning. I truly don’t think I’ll be offered the job but please tell me the following things aren’t normal in a teacher interview:

  • the interview was scheduled for 10:00 (they didn’t ask me what time I’d be available they just sent the invite for that time). I show up 10-15 minutes early and of course I’m waiting, no big deal. After a few minutes, the secretary tells me the AP called and said she’d come get me after class change. Class change came and went. No one came to get me until almost 10:20. And I get it, things happen, but there was no excuse about why it took them so long, all he said was “thanks for getting here early sorry for the wait”
  • the first question came from the AP, she asked me to go through my resume and talk about my education and experience. I did and when I finished talking she said “ok, well, thank you for… sharing all of that information with us” felt like a weird response to me explaining the last several years of my life
  • the principal asked me about the district I’m currently subbing for. First he asked me what classes I’ve subbed for. I wasn’t sure what he meant in the moment, so I clarified and asked “the actual classes?” And he said yes so I listed off classes I’ve subbed “art, English, elementary, pretty much whatever comes up”. Then he asked if I’ve ever had a long term position. I said “no, this is my first year subbing, so no long term sub jobs yet” and then he asked again “you haven’t gotten a maternity leave position yet?” And again, I said “no, this is my first year subbing so I haven’t gotten anything like that yet”.
  • Then, he said “yeah, this school isn’t like (the one I work at) we have students that live in million dollar homes and kids that don’t even have homes, this is the real world.” I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. The district I work at now is very large and has one high school for all students grades 10-12 so it literally has every kind of socioeconomic family here. Later, he made it VERY clear that the students there are middle to upper class and the parents are very involved because they are upper class. It just felt very weird that he was hung up on how many rich kids he has at that school
  • The two theatre teachers there started talking about how they stay after school EVERY DAY for 2-3 hours and other EVERY SATURDAY for 4-6 hours all year. I’d understand if it’s the week before a show or whatever, but that’s an additional 20 hours a week on top of teaching. There’s no way that’s normal.
  • The end of my interview was right before the next class change bell. The principal asked if I “wanted to see” their students. He took me in the hallway and we just stood there during class change (the other three stayed in the room to talk about me, I’m sure). He did not interact with a single student and not a single student even acknowledged him. It was very strange.

ETA: School started at the very end of August, and this position became available on October 7. When I inquired about that, the principal became very defensive and made it seem like the last teacher didn’t leave just for “personal reasons”. Also, the last teacher had been a teacher for 12 years and in our state, you can lose your license for quitting mid contract. So it makes me wonder even more about why it opened so suddenly.

Overall, the vibes were way off. I’ve only had one real interview for teaching, my last time, and it was pretty normal but I’m wondering if teaching interviews tend to be a bit strange. Did I dodge a bullet?