Michele Godwin is founding a library at Leadership High School. Please say hello!

 There she is! It’s Michele Godwin.

Because of her total awesomeness, you likely already know about her.

But just in case you don’t, I can let you in on a few secrets. Michele is an extraordinary English teacher and reading advocate and former colleague and great friend and overall upstanding person. Plus she’s funny, which I like.

Michele is also the founding librarian at Leadership High School in San Francisco. Yes, that’s the incredible school where I taught for 12 years. It makes me very happy that the folks at LHS, including Principal Beth Silbergeld, are investing significant resources into building a library. And it makes me even happier than Michele is at the helm.

This summer, Michele has been hard at work. Here are a few highlights:

+ She has raised thousands of dollars. Her plan on the first day of staff development is to surprise — Oprah-style — the teachers at LHS with starter classroom libraries. It’s going to be a little like when Oprah gave away free cars. Remember?

Michele is going to do something like this, except she’s going to point at the audience and jump up and down and say, over and over again, “You get a classroom library! You get a classroom library! Everybody gets a classroom library!”

+ Michele is spreading the news and getting people excited. She is tweeting at @readlhsbooks (please follow her!), posting on Facebook at the LHS Books Facebook page (go like it!), and writing book reviews over at Goodreads (go check it out!). Here is an example of one of her tweets:

Excited to be working on this library endeavor with @birdandbeckett. Supporting local business AND building readers! #lhssf #donatelhsbooks

— LHSBooks (@readlhsbooks) July 26, 2014

(And yes, she’s partnering with a local independent bookstore!) Perhaps even more exciting, Michele has launched the LHS Books website, where you can read her latest blog posts, find out what’s in the library (coming soon), and most important: make a donation. Hey, why don’t you make a donation now? Don’t you think so?

Did you make a donation? I hope so!

+ Here’s my favorite thing that Michele is doing: She and I are teaming up on the Kindle Classroom Project! (Michele is also a sustaining donor of the project.) Together we are going to distribute at least 60 Kindles to students grades nine through twelve.

(Nobody knows about this yet, so please keep it a secret. 🙂 )

We’re going to select the lucky students, give them a Kindle, tell them how much we want them to read, follow their reading progress, figure out which books they like, let them request books that aren’t currently in the Kindle library, and make the other students who don’t yet have Kindles jealous.

(Then those jealous students will clamor for Kindles, and we’ll ask for more donations, and we’ll raise more money, and maybe every student at LHS in 2015-16 will get a Kindle!)

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So there you have it: Michele Godwin. Don’t you like her? Wouldn’t you agree with me that she’s impressive? I thought so!

Please say hi to Michele in the comments!