Unless you are some type of cyborg, you are going to make mistakes. All humans make mistakes and it is the foundation of learning. When someone tells you that you sent the form home on the wrong day or you were not on your duty post by the time the bell rang, just own it. Be a learner mostly because you don’t know what you don’t know. The easiest to coach teachers are those who can take constructive criticism and make the necessary changes. Attempting to defend why you did whatever the way you did it just prolongs the conversation and angst and the administrator may make a mental note that you are more difficult to coach. There is great freedom in the response, “Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I will do better.”  Conversation over. Angst gone. Offense duly noted. Changes will occur. Fun fact, the first three years you are in a school is really a probationary period. This includes new teachers and veteran teachers with any degrees or certifications. Within the first three years in a new school, it is very easy for a principal to decide not to offer a contract to a teacher for the next school year. After the three-year mark, there is a little more involved in justifying why a tenured teacher is not offered a contract. Usually it is substantiated in the classroom walkthroughs or formative evaluations. But when you are new in a building, you have a little more reason to perform better, more professionally, and be coachable. Yes, you are coming in with a vast amount of classroom knowledge about teaching, learning, diagnosing deficits, and special needs learners, but be cognizant of how much more you will learn in your first three years and by all means, be coachable. You are valued for your enthusiasm, your ideas, your contributions to the school culture but you are not perfect. Don’t be too hard on yourself. The most valuable thing you can be to a school is a LEARNER.