Blog Post #10

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

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams was a great video assignment. Even if this video were not intended for the audience, but for his three young children. As a parent of two children, I admire his positive outlook on life. He was diagnosed with cancer, and was told that he had up to six months to live. I do not know if I could be so positive in his position. Although I can relate to Dr. Pausch, about a year ago, my doctor found two tumors on my thyroid. Since then I have been on medications to stop the growth of my tumors. This video has made me realize that if he could be so positive and happy then so could I.

Dr. Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In his class, he included project based learning. The way he taught his students to learn was by disguising the lesson/skill into something else that was fun. He then went on to say that, “Most of what we learn, we learn indirectly, by watching someone, and working together as a team. I agree with Dr. Pausch’s statement, and I think that it is valuable for students to experience this type of learning in a class. Following the example from Dr. Pausch, by allowing his students to have the creative control in the assignments, they were able to create great pieces of work.

In this video, he explained many great things that I really think are important for me as a student majoring in Education to become an Educator, which I want to remember. One great phrase that Dr. Pausch said was “To teach students how to become self-reflective. If I could enlighten my students with the skills to look at who they are, where they want to go in life, and how to overcome their challenges, or “Brick Walls” that make us prove how badly we want it. It would be a way of encouraging my students to chase their dreams no matter how silly people might think they are if it inspires you, then dream big. Although, I think that his best advice is about critics. He said that “Critics are good, and you need to listen to it; if you are doing something wrong and someone is not correcting you that means they have given up on you.” I think that is very necessary to know, as a teacher; you are your student’s critics. They want to hear how they are doing. Even if it takes some elbow grease and extra time, Dr. Pausch said that “If you wait long enough, people will surprise and impress you.”

P.S. I have decided, I am a Tigger!