Blog Assignment #8

Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch
Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The video is titled, "The Last Lecture" and it discusses achieving childhood dreams. This lecture was given, only a month after doctors told him that he had three-to-six months to live following a recurrence of pancreatic cancer. Dr. Pausch decided to take the news and give it purpose, he took it as time to reflect and help others while he still could. The video was inspiring and very helpful.

In the beginning, Dr. Randy Pausch says "Always have something to bring to the table." I believe, as educators, it is our job to bring resources, knowledge, and activities into the classroom that inspire the children to learn. It is important to remember fundamentals when beginning to teach or learn. His story of Coach Graham shows the importance of fundamentals first or the fancy stuff won't work. In education, we must start small. Letters, numbers, sounds building up to words, math, and syllables so on and so forth. In order to make words for conversation or communication, we must first now the sounds and letters that make it up. Always begin with fundamentals in the classroom. "Brick walls are meant to show dedication" this quote means to never give up! There may be trials along the way, but they are meant to help show determination and practice dedication. Brick walls show up all throughout the lessons, we must keep going. He then gives the tip of the "head-fake" this means to make lessons that have the children think they are doing one thing, ex: playing football, but really they are learning team work and sportmanship, etc. He then discusses the importance of delivery of your message. He tells a story about two men with the same answer, yet they were very different messages. When a question is asked, be sure to listen directly to the person and be positive with the answer, even if you've been asked many questions already. Also ask questions in return, and make sure they are well spoken and direct questions. Teachers can learn from students at any time, that helps to show the students are learning and being able to apply their knowledge in some ways you can't yet. Continuing on about lessons and assignments, he says to give them freedom to come up with many answers instead of limiting it to one. He mentions project based learning and the use of it in the classroom being very beneficial and rewarding. By giving students the freedom to create or help make something they truly care about, we give them more opportunity to surprise us and surpass expectations. His final point is lessons learned. Going over lessons learned in the classroom gives us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves and what we have learned. Reflection allows for corrections. There are many things we might overlook or think we did right, but once we go back we see it wasn't. That allows us to change it and make it better. Reflection in the classroom helps ensure we continue to strive for the bettering and continuance of education. Some of the lessons he hoped to cover in this were to practice humility, never stop learning, give thanks, practice loyalty, and HELP OTHERS. I hope to use these lessons in my future classroom.