Preparing for a Phone Interview

Tomorrow, I have a phone interview at 10:30 am. Here are my tasks:

• Pour a glass of water to combat post-nasal drip
• Read the educational institution's mission statement
• Read a relevant article from a competent source

The school's mission is college preparatory (for kids in gr. 2-5!)  I'll dwell on that a bit in preparation for the interview:  possible questions will be how do we prepare students for college at age 10?  What do we want a college student to look like and act, and how do we reach that goal?

The relevant article, from Office of Educational Research and Improvement, focused on "cultural proficiency."  I researched this topic because I know that, if hired, I will be challenged with being one of the few white guys in a school with a lot of students with experiences (and skin color) very different from mine.  

I learned, and will mention in the interview if appropriate, that cultural proficiency is 2 steps above cultural blindness (we all the same) and surpasses the "mixing pot" of the previous American generation.  So, I must learn or exhibit 2 skills as a white guy:

• Know my own culture, how it works, and how it affects everybody else
• Be able to learn, quickly, how to learn about other cultures appropriately.

That's it!  If I can authentically learn about the "other," "they" will be much more supported by my position of authority...in this case, a playground supervisor.