Celebrate Good Times, Come On! 11/15

Each Saturday  Ruth Ayres invites us to share and celebrate events from our week. Looking for small celebrations has certainly improved my outlook on my week. For that, I am certainly grateful to Ruth and to all of you who choose to celebrate with us.

This week I am celebrating ideas!  Now this may seem like an odd celebration, but if you think about it, many celebrations start out as just an idea...a good one, a bad one, and even a crazy one.

Have you ever come up with an idea and then started doubting yourself, hearing the words...what in the world were you thinking?  I am a dreamer and a doer, and sometimes that can be a dangerous combination. 

I have this little voice that dwells inside my head, and it sometimes whispers these "great" ideas to me.  My husband tells me I need to stop listening to it! But I can't.  It's who I am.

Being a passionate reader, I am always trying to come up with ideas to share that passion outside the walls of my classroom.  

Two years ago after a consultant visited our elementary schools and the newspaper headlines blatantly stated   "Consultant Says Kids Can't Read,"  I heard that little voice.  I knew something needed to be done.  I knew I was the one to do it.

I came up with the idea of a community book drive.  Communities have food drives, blood drives, and canned food drives.  Why not a book drive?  We collected used and new books and donations to buy books, and then distributed them to over 1,000 students in our school district.  It was a huge success, but it was also a lot of work!

Now that I have entered the world of blogging, I began to ponder how I could use blogging to share my reading passion with my school.  I had already started a classroom blog, but I wanted something more than that.  Something where I could reach more people.

Here came that little voice.  I knew, once again, that I needed to react.  This is how the idea of The Franklin Bookmark came about.

This week I created an "unofficial" blog where our students, families and teachers can share all things about reading.  My vision is to review books for all grade levels.  These will be written by myself, current and former students, and teachers.  I want to feature student readers and share the reading lives of our teachers.  Families will be included by sharing tips and information about how parents can encourage, support, and celebrate reading at home.

I have no idea where this is heading.  I just know that little voice is whispering again.  I feel I need to listen.  

What do you think?  Is this a crazy idea?  Do you think it will work?  Do I need to approach it in a different way?  Most of you have much more experience with blogging than I have, and I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.

So, today I celebrate ideas...the good, the bad, the crazy ones...and the ones that turn into celebrations!

Have a great week and may you be blessed with many celebrations!