Blog Post 10 What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning from Randy Pausch?

http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/

In Randy Pausch's last lecture, Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, he starts off by mentioning his impending death due to cancer. He states that he is not going to speak about that nor was he worried, because you cannot control everything and must work with what you have. This is a good first lesson to learn for teachers: don't worry if you don't have a perfect situation, work with what you have. In many classrooms, not all students will know the same informations, be on the same learning level, or have all necessary equipment. While it may be hard to deal with, not having a perfect classroom, one must press on.

He continues on to show his childhood dreams and how he fulfilled them. The main lesson here is to never give up! While Randy hit many obstacles, or brick walls, he kept pushing. As he said the point of brick walls are not to keep you out but to make sure you really want it. After he achieved his dreams, he wanted to make other people's childhood dreams come true. This is very important for future educators to think about. As Randy says, childhood dreams are important. Many children create their dreams based on their experience. As future teachers, it is our responsibility to interest students so that they can dream. Teachers are also the first resource for young dreamers. We will be giving students the knowledge and tools necessary to one-day achieve their dreams.

A third lesson anyone can learn from Randy is what he called a "Head Fake". Randy uses the example of sports. While many children are put into sports. Parents want their kids to, of course, learn how to play football or how to score a touchdown, there are always other lessons to be learned. These are called "head fakes", lessons like working with others, hard-work... This should always be considered while teaching. During any group project these lessons become more useful and needed.

Randy Pausch is an inspiration to so many people, teachers, students, anyone who is willing to watch his lecture. I will keep his points in mind throughout my education and in the future during my teaching career. I hope many others will also find inspiration in him.