Thursday, September 20, 2012

Book Fairy Invasion

If you work in a high school, you know that Halloween is not the only day of the year that you can continue to dress up as an adult.  There is always Homecoming week.  What I love about Homecoming week is planning a surprise for students.  We started a few years ago with a Super Teacher shirt that my husband made for us on our back porch single color screen press.  (Umm, yes, we have a single color T-shirt press on  my back porch, one of the benefits of marrying an artist, I suppose!)  I just give him a concept and he fleshes it out.   We resurrected our shirts and silver sequined capes this year for twin day.  But this year we added the book fairy a costume inspired by pin on Pinterest as our surprise for "Out of this World" day.

My husband the artist designed a prototype wing after I showed him the pictures.  Each teacher built their set of wings using a book cover, dictionary pages, double-stick tape, and  designed duct tape.  We had a team building aka costume design session after school on Tuesday.  Most of us should have been grading papers and uploading them for progress reports.  In fact, I told my college students that I didn't quite finish grading all of their papers this week because I needed to work on my book fairy costume. They agreed with me, that my time was well-spent making the costume.

 After walking around the halls and delivering books to classrooms today, I wholeheartedly agree. My mentor, Janet Allen, would always share Margaret Mooney's quote, "Books that we share with students should always have charm, magic, impact, and appeal."  Today reading and English teachers reminded students of the charm and magic of reading brings as evident by the joy and smiles the students' faces when the book fairies invaded the Creek.  A day filled with impact and appeal.