Amanda Hood chosen as Mountain Brook Junior High principal
Published: Thursday, June 14, 2012, 4:51 PM
Amanda Hood, Mountain Brook Junior High School's new principal. "The collaborative culture here and the support that everyone receives is what makes it different," Hood said. "It's very unique. You don't find it often. There's a level of professional commitment that is quite remarkable."
Last year, Hood began working in the system as an assistant principal at the high school. The Mountain Brook Board of Education this week chose her to become the new principal at Mountain Brook Junior High.
Hood's husband Jerry is a teacher and the head football coach at Clay-Chalkville High School.
Hood said she hopes to spend the first year getting to know the school's strengths and weaknesses.
"I want to take the next year and celebrate the things we do well, and seek out the things we'd like to improve," she said. "It's a continual collaboration and reflection cycle, and it's something we shouldn't do every once in awhile."
Prior to working in Mountain Brook, Hood taught at Oak Mountain High School and was an assistant principal at Spain Park High.
Hood is also mother to four adopted children from the Ukraine -- Olivia, 13, Christian, 12, Daniel, 8 and Vica, 7. That wasn't her original plan, though. When she and her husband traveled to the country in 2008, they intended to adopt two children.
"We went in and they laid out four photographs," she said. "We thought it was some mistake. Then I wondered how I was going to choose two and they said, 'No, they go together.'" The couple had 15 minutes to decide whether they would adopt the quartet.
None of the children spoke English, and the Hoods had spent a few months learning not Russian, but Ukrainian.
"It forced Jerry and I to be very creative about the way we were able to meet their needs, and to meet basic needs," she said. "He and I both being teachers, we had a little bit of an advantage. For about two or three months, we were all speaking a language that was all our own. We got a lot of funny stares in restaurants."
