The Impact of Books on Our Lives

Books had been part of everyone lives. From the womb even to the tomb, people read books or someone read to them. But, there are books that can have tremendous impact to someone’s life like self-help books, inspirational books and biographical books.

I was born in the Philippines where bibliographical books are out of reach for students because it was too expensive to purchase and back then there were not enough much selection to choose from. One book though changed my life. When I was in high school, we were required to read the biography of our national hero “Jose Rizal.” Just by reading his biography opened my mind that if you persevere, you will be able to achieve your dreams. He fought hard using paper and pen to give the Filipino people their freedom. I also learned that his life was no different from mine because he also experienced the stereotypes and racism from other people. Also, I adopted his mantra of success, which is “when people say you cannot do it, prove them wrong.”

Based from my experience and VanTassel-Baska’s statement in the book “Socio-Emotional Curriculum with the Gifted and Talented Students (2009),” that Biographical books have been acknowledged as significant, effective tools to help young people solve personal problems and develop skills necessary for successful living" is definitely true and tested. There are many benefits of allowing students to read bigraphy of famous people. One of the benefits is it allows students to learn more about the lives of the people in a specific historical period (pp. 258). It also allows them to draw comparison about how the people in this specfic historical period were able to survive, rise to the top amidst of different social, emotional, economic, mental and ...

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...ss their social and emotional needs. As teachers, we have the responsibility to provide the best education to the students to prepare them for the real world.

Works Cited

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"Pura Belpre." REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library & Information

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VanTassel-Baska, J.L., Cross, T. L. & Olenchak, F. R. (Eds.). (2009). Social-Emotional

Curriculum With Gifted and Talented Students. Prufrock Press Inc. Waco, Texas.