I said before that be ready for some exciting news and I'm finally getting around to sharing! Let's start at the beginning....
This year during one of my graduate classes, we were required to try doing some of our own writing because being a good writing teacher means practicing writing yourself. I decided that I was going to try blogging (hence this blog!) and grant writing. It took me a long time to find a grant that our school qualified for, would fit my project and did not have a passing due date.
I finally landed on the Michigan Literacy Legacy Fund. After brainstorming, drafting, editing, revising, more editing and more revising I sent my grant narrative to my teacher. I thought that this was going to be as far as I would take this grant, but no more than a week later my teacher emailed me saying that she thought this was one of the best grant narratives she has seen and even wanted to use it as an example in the future. She said "Let me know if you get it".
At this point I was not planning on sending the grant in. I did not think I had a chance, but based on my teacher's feedback I decided to give it a go. I only had a couple days to get it turned in so I finished up the paperwork and sent in the grant.
To be honest I kind of forgot about it, but one day our secretary came into my classroom and said "You know that grant that you sent in? I just got a call and you got it!" I yelled out "What? No way!" I could not believe it. Our secretary said the letter would be coming soon.
It's not a huge amount of money, but it is helping out my school get some much needed nonfiction materials. The best part was I got to share an important lesson with my students, which is that hard work pays off and writing is an important way of communicating to others, in this case a way of communicating to a group of people that will help fund projects in your school.
Alright I'm done tooting my horn now.
