Blog Post 8

What can we learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch?

Randy Pausch's Last lecture was motivational and inspirational. It was a little long compared to other videos we have had to watch, but my eyes were on the screen the entire time. He has a great way of keeping his lecture interesting. I am an overly emotional person, so of course, this video made tear up a bit (just like almost anything else I watch). I love how passionate he is about enabling other people's dreams. I learned several things while watching this lecture. I have always heard, and sometimes used the term "I've hit a brick wall", but I have never heard the term explained the way it was explained in the video. Mr. Pausch said "Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." He also explains how the brick walls are there to stop "the other people" , meaning the people that don't push hard enough to achieve something they're going after. Brick walls allow us to show our dedication to something that we are working on. I know I've hit a few while working on my degree, but hearing his words has taught me to push through it no matter what.

Mr. Pausch had a lot of powerful words that taught me a couple of ways to help enable my future students. He says "Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you." This lets me know that I need to always make sure I never rush my students' work. Of course, children always need a friendly boost, but they also need time to be creative and have their own thoughts on things. Something else that was very helpful that Mr. Pausch talked about was how you should answer someone's question if you don't have the information they're seeking. Instead of saying "I don't know", you should say something like "I don't have very much information on that, but let's see what we can find out".(I've heard Dr. Strange say something similar as well). That was a very good piece of advice for us as future educators. We should never tell our students we don't know, and leave it at that. Instead, we should help them find a way to help themselves. By doing so only helps the students in the long run because it will make them think more critically and dig deeper for what they're searching for. That is something you can give your students that they can keep with them for life. Also, we should never set bars for our students. Setting bars could, in a way, hurt their creative and critical thinking abilities because you are cutting off what they could possibly do. Let your students go beyond what you expect from them.

Every week that goes by in this class, I learn more and more. I believe that this has been my favorite lesson so far. I gained so much from watching Mr. Pausch's lecture and I am looking forward to putting some of his advice to work!

Here are a couple of quotes stated by Randy Pausch that I really enjoyed.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted"

"The best gift an educator can give is to get someone to become self reflective"