BOOKS THAT MADE US GO “HMMMM”
Books that have Inspired us over the years
(this is a work in progress… we are not finished so come back to look for new books!)
Find Out How You Can WIN a Book
We are giving away copy of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch courtesy of Julie Schwietert Collazo. She is known on Twitter as @Collazoprojects. Julie is a Managing Editor of MatadorNetwork. You can also find Julie’s beautiful writing at Cuaderno Inedito. BIG THANKS to Julie for her generosity!
To win this book, please tell us about a life changing lesson you have gained through a book, a person, or a situation in the comment.
Please also leave twitter ID and/or email and the winner will be notified on Valentine’s Day, Sunday, February 14, 2010. (We DO NOT spam!)
Click on the book title and it will take you to the respective sites.
Always Looking Up
The Audacity of Hope
Giving
Blink
The Tipping Point
Freakonomics
Pay it Forward
From Me to We
Generosity Factor
Interview with Michael Pollan, Author of In Defense of Food
Omnivore’s Dilmma
Don’t Eat This Book
The Element
The Last Lecture
Just Who Will You Be
What Should I Do With My Life
Who Moved My Cheese
You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader
Interview with Pam Slim, Author of Escape from Cubicle Nation
This post is featured in Prevention NOT Prescription weekly round-up of The Kathleen Show, (Grabbing life by the Ovaries) Be sure to stop by their website for exciting topics and interviews.
Probably the person I learned the best lesson was from a former student. I taught at a rural school about an hour from the Mexican-American border. Poverty was common in our area, with 85% of our students qualifying for free/reduced lunch. Boys joined gangs and young girls were moms before they graduated, if they graduated at all. One year I taught US History to freshman. There was one boy in one of my classes who absolutely delighted in pushing my buttons and giving me hell. I tried to encourage him. I tried to help him. I pushed him. He would have none of it. He failed my class and moved onto the second year of high school, where he took US History a second time with another teacher…and failed again. His third year at high school he took US History for the third time and he finally passed. During his second and third years at the high school, I would see him. I would say hi, but nothing out of the ordinary. Flash foward to what should have been his senior year. I found out that he had indeed turned things around his junior year and had a shot of passing with all of his friends on time.
This was a student who I thought hated me and had no respect for me. He told me otherwise. He told me I made a difference, even though his grade did not show it the first year with me, or even the second year with another teacher. He told me he liked my class and he thanked me. What could I have possibly given him other than a failing grade and grief. It was then I realized that we are not always aware of the seeds we are planting. Something I said or did that year stuck with him, stuck with him to the point that he was willing to share his graduation success with me. Even now as I write this, I see his face, his smile, and have tears. What I do matters, even when I don’t reach them that first year.
Over the years, I have seen this same cycle repeat itself. It seems that the students I push to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered but who opt to fail are the ones who keep coming back. They tell me they love me, they miss my class, and they continually try to reconnect with me.
I now understand that I might be the only person in that child’s life that hugs them, encourages them, spends times with them, believes in them, or sees a future for them. I am planting invisible seeds of some of the mightiest oaks or most beautiful blooms to ever emerge. My words. My actions. My smile. My encouragement. My push to succeed. It all matters. Thank Isaias for helping to see that. Thank you for giving me a gift that will last me a lifetime.
Lisa
So funny! I’m reading The Last Lecture as we speak! It’s sitting right next to me on the bed; just finished reading the World Book Encyclopedia chapter. My dad sent me this book for Christmas.
To your list, I’d add any book by SARK. I discovered her books when I was in high school, I guess, and found that they were so validating with respect to living a life of creativity–living life as creativity.
Any book of poetry by Mary Oliver, whose words inspire reverence not just for language, but also for the natural world.
And for more books of poetry that inspire, Garrison Keillor’s anthology, Good Poems for Hard Times, and another anthology, Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times.
Raymond Carver’s poem “Gravy,” which can be found in the book A New Path to the Waterfall.
Pablo Neruda’s poems– especially the odes (in Spanish and in English), which, like Oliver’s poems, inspire reverence for words and life, though in a totally different way.