Cori Pflug-Tilton likes to be prepared for whatever may come, and she has to be, as principal of Snoqualmie Elementary School.

“It’s a very dynamic place,” she said one morning during the last week of school. Students and staff were eagerly anticipating Friday, and she was working on year-end staff reviews, but making time for any parent that knocked on her door.

“It’s not a problem when people show up to talk to you,” she said. “It’s an opportunity.”

Pflug-Tilton’s tendency to be ready for anything has served her well over the years. The elementary education degree that in 1982 she tacked onto her original German degree from Western Washington University—“I was taking some education classes, because I thought that might be wonderful to teach,” she said—led her to realize that she really wanted to finish and earn her education degree. As a teacher, she decided to earn her principal certificate, in case she wanted to some day become an administrator, and as a principal, she has used her own teaching and learning experience, particularly with languages, to help shape the curriculum offerings in the Snoqualmie Valley School District. Last year, she earned her superintendent’s certificate from Seattle University.

Luck and timing have also helped Pflug-Tilton on her career path. While student teaching at Sehome High School, the teacher she’d worked with went on maternity leave, and askedPflug-Tilton replace her.

“So I sort of fell into this great opportunity of teaching all advanced high school-level courses, and really enjoyed that,” she said.

After marrying fellow German teacher Thomas Tilton of Mount Si High School, she moved to the district and couldn’t find a job teaching German, but taught it anyway.

At first, it was just an evening community class, for a few teachers and other community members who would soon be traveling with the high school German club and wanted to know some basics of the language. Later, after she was hired as a sixth grade teacher at Snoqualmie Elementary, “I got to pilot a program and teach the kids German, within my day.”

The “total physical response” method she used to teach sixth graders German focused on objects and actions first, grammar later.

“Foreign language teaching is just like learning your first language, where we learn through commands, we learn from objects, from seeing things,” she explained. “Then later, we learn to produce the sound. First we understand, then we produce, then we read, and then we write.

When Pflug-Tilton was ready to explore more leadership opportunities, she applied for an assistant principal position at Opstad Elementary, where she served for two years as assistant principal, and another two as interim principal. She enjoyed the work, but wanted to spend more time with her 3 year-old son, Paul, so she began looking for a part-time position. She found a job-share with Kirk Dunckel, then doing his principal internship at Chief Kanim Middle School and stayed for two years, before going on “special assignment.”

For the next three years, Pflug-Tilton worked part time, with staff members in every school building, to develop a curriculum framework that schools could use to meet state learning requirements.

“I learned a lot about curriculum and instruction,” she said. “It strengthened my abilities when I came back… I felt a lot more confident about what we would do in our building.”

She chose administration over teaching when she went back to work as principal of Snoqualmie Elementary in 2002, because she said she realized that “the principalship had kind of the best of all worlds, because you’re with the kids, but you’re also working with adults.”

Pflug-Tilton is comfortable in her principal’s chair, and knows that she belongs there.

“I’ve realized what really drives me are relationships, with kids, with adults, and this is the perfect setting in terms of making some impact, influencing, but also learning,” she said. “You learn every day from kids.”