What's a good read?
October 5th marks World Teachers’ Day, which was founded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) along with Education International (EI), to celebrate educators and the role they play in our lives. This occasion bears special significance for teachers in the Philippines, given all the challenges they’ve had to contend with as part of the new normal.
Filipino teachers have had to shift from primarily face-to-face education to remote learning, work around infrastructure issues like slow internet speeds, and attend to the increasingly varied needs of their students, many of whom are dealing with the issues brought on by the ongoing pandemic and lockdown – all while still doing their very best to educate their pupils.
To honor the role that Filipino teachers have in educating us – especially during these unprecedented times – Bookshelf PH is giving away free audiobooks to readers in the Philippines through its streaming platform, Audiophile. At first glance, audiobooks may seem like an odd choice of token to commemorate World Teachers’ Day, but the medium is actually apt.
For one, audiobooks are inclusive, since they can be consumed by the differently abled as well as the new to reading. Second, they can promote better mental health, since they can reduce screen usage at a time our eyes are frequently glued to our screens. And third, audiobooks can help listeners with their comprehension and vocabulary, since speech has more context clues than text.
All of these are of course values that teachers try to promote.
“We’re proud to extend free access to our audiobooks for World Teachers’ Day. Our nation’s teachers have always promoted inclusion, well-being, and language excellence, so it’s nice to aid in their mission through our growing collection of Filipino audiobooks,” said Kyle Nate, the deputy editorial director and co-founder of Bookshelf PH.
To avail of this offer, interested readers can simply visit this Bookshelf PH post, select the audiobook of their choice, and then proceed to its individual access link. They can then stream the audiobook of their choosing, whenever and wherever they please, on desktop or on mobile. This ease of access may in fact be the biggest alignment between World Teachers’ Day and the audiobooks on Audiophile.
“Our ultimate aim is to democratize access to Filipino content. Audiobooks are our medium of choice, but we are category agnostic: Filipino readers should have ready access to a diversity of fiction and non-fiction genres, so they can learn whenever they wish – just as our teachers would have wanted,” said Ada Ortega, one of the co-founders of Bookshelf PH.
To enjoy their complimentary audiobook for World Teachers’ Day, interested readers are encouraged to proceed to the free audiobook offer on this page.