I did this when I retired, only at the local community college - mind you our CC had about 20K students and 1500 teachers - so not exactly small. The level of political crap was high, but we had a chair who handled all that and faded any heat......it helped somewhat.
I also had zero experience as a teacher and got hired one week before classes started. The day they hired me they told me to write up my syllabus and schedule for the year.....say what? Silly bus?
So what I did was shadow another teacher's class - he taught the same subject and his class was right before mine - I copied all his paperwork and just changed the name and times - done!
My students were fresh out of high school, so pretty much the same kids and I expected them to be like me and my buddies when I took auto shop in high school - that is, at least interested in learning or hearing what the teacher said. Sadly, these kids are different.....
I'd say about 1/3 actually knew what a screwdriver was and which end to hold, 1/3 were there because mom told them either go to school or get a damn job, and the final 1/3 were there on work release from jail and went right back immediately after classes.
I feel like it was mostly my fault that I didn't relate well to these kids - you need to reach them somehow and most teachers are fairly good entertainers - if you can get their attention you at least have half a chance. I tried to emulate some of the others who seemed to have better luck with their students, but I was disappointed at the total lack of interest most of them showed, and at the complete lack of basic education they had, coming out of one of the best, highest rated high school systems in the country.
For example: I wanted to teach the cooling system, starting with the thermostat - so I said now we all know what temperature water boils at? Crickets. No one in the class knew what temperature water boiled at, at sea level. No one out of 18 kids.
The next disappointment was when I wanted to teach induction - I started with magnets, and talked about them having two poles and.......no one knew what I was talking about. I discovered magnets when I was in first grade.
Another young man didn't know how to use an air chuck to air up a tire, or how to attach it to the air hose and turn on the air. Sure, it was easy enough to show him - several times over the semester - but I was teaching an advanced course - how the hell did he even get in my class?
Another time I was teaching tires, and one of the things I mentioned was the cone shape on one side of the lug nuts goes towards the wheel - this just seems like something any reasonably intelligent person could figure out just from looking at them, but after lecture we immediately went into the shop and the first car that was pulled in (our students worked on their own cars - that way they had ownership of the work they were doing) to balance his tires and every lug nut on his car was backward.
There were many "teachable" moments like this, plus I had to really be on my toes in the shop - I didn't have trouble with horseplay, but the number of scary things that can happen to a dumbass in a shop full of cars, lifts and equipment is legion!
I know this is a long post and maybe I lost everyone ten paragraphs ago but if you've read this far it wasn't all doom and gloom. In those few moments when you see a lightbulb go on in a kids eyes - those make all the other crap worthwhile.
I did it for 5 years and probably would have gone on 5 more but the school changed their requirements and I was deemed to old, so it ended.
I sure liked having access to the shop and lifts, alignment machines and such!