Melinda S. Miller

Our staff has been using the strategy of "exit tickets" for a couple years now. It was a strategy we were mostly implementing in our special area classes, Art, Music, P.E., Library, and Computer. It was our way of making sure students were getting as much writing processing as possible. I usually ... Read More about Faculty Meeting/PD Exit Ticket Idea

Yesterday our SWMAESP Sub D Principals group met for our quarterly meeting. We shared ideas for staff holiday gifts so I thought I would share in case you are still looking for ideas. Scarves with district logo Lottery tickets Movie tickets to the dollar movie theater T-shirts/sweatshirts with ... Read More about Staff Holiday Ideas

In addition to using this blog as a personal/professional space for my ramblings about the Principal-ship, I put information here that I want to link back to or find again someday. Here are the results to the survey regarding our MAESP State Conference. ... Read More about MAESP Survey Results

What on earth do you include in a paper newsletter when you have a blog and school Facebook page? I struggle with this every month. It actually drives me crazy. Last year, and the beginning of this year, I tried to get away from sending home a paper newsletter. But it seems like a nice service to ... Read More about Newsletter Nuisance

As the weekend winds to a close I just wanted to say THANKS to all my principal friends, aspiring principal friends, and teachers who read this blog. Some of you I've met face-to-face while others it will always feel like we have known each other our whole careers.  Many of you have commented ... Read More about Thankful for my Principal Friends

This is our way of collecting for our holiday drive........ Hats, Underwear, Gloves, & Scarves ... Read More about Tree of H.U.G.S.

Now here's an idea you can use tomorrow! Usually I write a Thanksgiving note/letter to my teachers. Some years I give them a little treat of some kind. Our school district always provides each staff member a free ham/turkey dinner the day before break. Just a little bit of decoration can spice ... Read More about Thanksgiving in the Workroom

 Mini-observation Memo I sent my teachers. This is after reading the book "Leverage Leadership." I created a tentative calendar of observations for October so I have to stick to it:)  October = Round 2 Mini-Observations Holy cow it's October already!!!   Mini-observation ... Read More about My Mini-Observation Process this Month

Last year I agreed to be the Vice President of SWMAESP. (Southwest Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals) My good friend Mike Dawson was going to be the President but he got an Asst. Supt. job and completely abandoned me! Of course I am kidding. I am very happy for Mike and he has ... Read More about SWMAESP Excecutive Meeting Documents

In order to get to know each other better we did a personality trait activity at our back-to-school staff meeting. Of course this is not a research based tried and tested activity but it was fun to see where everyone fell according to their self-assessments. We laughed a lot! North: Acting - ... Read More about Personality Trait Activity with Staff – FUN!

Here are some of our agendas and notes from the first days of school meetings: We are going through Adaptive Schools Training and brought back some information from our summer training. The Working Agreements are from last year and we are going to tweak these. When our Leadership Team met we ... Read More about Begin Year & Faculty Meeting Anchor Charts

The Practical Principals podcast is a podcast that gives school principals practical survival tips. If you are new to reading my blog, Scott and I started podcasting together in 2007. Our next show will be #30. You can follow Scott on twitter here and his blog is here. Scott is a MS principal in ... Read More about The Practicial Principals Are Back!