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These principal interview questions, from REAL interview lists, will prepare you to showcase your skills and impress in an administrative interview.

A first-year principal has many ups and downs. The job creates many life changes. Review five changes a first-year principal will experience.

There are two qualities that I believe are under-rated and often get unnoticed or not discussed when you think of top qualities of principals.

"Don't tell me what kind of day to have."

Heated Parent Phone Calls - Five Free and Easy Strategies for Keeping Cool and Reaching Solutions with angry parents.

Principal interview questions to prepare for. View potential questions asked during a principal job interview. Clear guidelines around principal assessment.

Results from our survey of 85 teachers in over 20 U.S. states reveal the things teachers would never say to their principals' faces.

"Don't tell me what kind of day to have."

"What's the big deal with Pinterest?" my husband asked me as he saw me searching some of my pinned boards. I didn't really have a good answer for him, until he followed up with, "why not just do a google search and specify images?" That certainly is one way to find an image of something when you need it, however, I don't always know that I need to find something. That's where Pinterest comes in; you don't know what you don't know so you're not going to search for it! (Those of you on Twitter probably experienced this when you realized this benefit on Twitter!) Here's the perfect example of where Pinterst comes into your life and helps you when you weren't even searching: Have you ever had a pair of flip-flops break? I have several times. It irritated me, but I just tossed them and bought new ones. Never did I think to search for a way to fix them (aside from when I was at work and had to just rely on tape and walking very carefully). Well, I was checking my Pinterest feed (not even sure if it's called a 'feed' on Pinterest) and look at what I discovered: As much as I love decorating for Christmas/winter theme, I've never really sat on google searching for innovative ways to decorate, but look what I found on Pinterest: Fill balloons with water and add food coloring, once frozen cut the balloons off & they look like giant marbles. So neat, right? Or what about these ideas, that again, I don't know what I would have had to type into google to find: Paint in ziplock bags, taped to table. Great distraction, no mess! Who knew aluminum foil was the key for removing food from glass dishes...Find more cleaning ideas here. balloon powered racers Make a family fingerprint ornament with salt dough + silver spray paint Baking soda neutralizes the ph in the soil and nothing will grow there. use baking soda around all of the edges of flower beds to keep the grass and weeds from growing into beds. Just sprinkle it onto the soil so that it covers it lightly. Do this twice a year - spring and fall. Hot dog spiders. Before cooking, stick pasta through hot dogs, then boil ! -Will have to try this for fun! OK, so I do find a lot of random and neat ideas that I never would have considered searching for, but since I follow a lot of the same great educators that I follow on twitter, I find a lot of great ideas to share with my teachers, like these: Six Classroom Questions to start off the school year! Nonfiction anchor chart Reading Recommendation Bulletin Board math journal entry for types of triangles and sum of angles in a triangle Great way to display class rules, reminders, etc. Use student photos with speech bubbles Or I've found these great images/quotes to put up on the bathroom doors: Seriously, I probably never would have searched for any of these ideas, but in just a few minutes each day I can check my Pinterest feed and repin a few items I think staff may be interested in and share it on my Monday Memo each week. Quite honestly, I only check Pinterest a few times a week, so in less than 10 minutes a week I find so many great ideas to share with them. When you're on Pinterest and see these images, you can also click on them to get to the original blog post/site that explains more about the image (I did not do that for this blog post). So what are you waiting for? Start Pinning!! Here's a great blog post to help you get started: Pinterest-My New Love for Visual Bookmarking Education and Teaching Web Content

School is back in session, and the grades are looking up; ABC’s breakout comedy Abbott Elementary continues to raise the bar and grow its audience.

"Don't tell me what kind of day to have."

The TV series Abbott Elementary follows the hijinks of faculty members who do whatever it takes to ensure that students get the education they deserve. Our latest quiz asks: Which Abbott Elementary teacher are you?

Need ways to support and help your students with ADHD or other attention needs? This blog post provides tips to help you support these students.

Here's a cross-post from my staff memo blog... Last school year I learned a great deal from the book Mindset, by Carol Dweck and shared my learning with you in this post. I don't know if anyone else also read this book, but I am starting to notice a lot of classroom practices and teachers talking in ways to encourage students to have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. In one classroom, students were discussing the following quote: "We all make mistakes. That's why a pencil has an eraser." I've been lucky enough to get into several classrooms during the math talk time to hear students explain their thinking or to see students writing to "Puzzled Penguin" to tell him what math mistake he made. In another classroom during science stations, students were told "Don't worry if you get it wrong, just try to think of what it might be and then check to see if you're right. Think about the new things you're learning." At the end of this class period, students' exit slips included listing 3 new things they learned. What was most amazing to me is throughout this class period, one student stood out to me as the model reason of why we need to encourage students to have a growth mindset. During an iPad quiz, I watched this student answer questions as quickly as possible and when she got them wrong, moved on without even paying attention to what the correct answer was so she could learn from it. When she moved on to a partner quiz with student-made notecards, she was proud to share that she had 15 right and only 5 wrong. When I asked her what she learned from the 5 wrong she said, "oh, I guess I should look at them." At the end of the class period when students were given the exit slips on 3 new things they learned, everyone started writing, but this student said, "I didn't learn anything new." The teacher did everything she could to encourage students to focus on what new things they were learning, however, this particular student has already become so used to focusing on getting the right answers, that she hasn't learned how to learn from the wrong answers. She was my "aha moment" of why we need to continue our work on helping our students to become passionate about learning, develop a growth mindset, and learn from mistakes. If you're looking for great posters/quotes on this topic, I found great ones from Krissy Venosdale. Here are some of my favorites:

Restorative practices in elementary schools are incredible, but they look a little different than in the secondary levels.