Blog Assignment #8

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

In the video, "Randy Pausch's Last Lecture:Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", Pausch makes five major and impactful points of things that we can learn from. The first is “Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things”. As soon to be teachers, we are going to hit many brick walls. These brick walls let us prove how badly we want things by pushing us to our limit to overcome them. They force us to work our hardest to accomplish what we want to accomplish. Whether the brick wall is a pile of paperwork or a working with a struggling student to help them accomplish their educational goals, those brick walls prove how much determination we have and how much we love what we do. The second point is “Have fun while learning-its ok”. Most of the time people think about learning at school and automatically associate it with being bored and sitting in a desk all day. We should encourage students to have fun while learning. We should also bring the fun to the classroom. Using project based learning techniques or hands on manipulatives, we should make learning a lesson fun for the students.

   The third point Pausch mentioned is “Never lose your childlike wonder-it drives us”. No matter what age group you teach, it requires an imagination and childlike wonder to make things happen. You have to be able to think outside of the box to relate to your students and adapt lessons to what encourages them to learn. The fourth point that is mentioned is “Loyalty is a two-way street-Believe in your students adn they will believe in and with you”. All I can say is “wow”. That is such a strong and true point. Anytime someone believes in you, you automatically respect them and believe in them as well. When I was tutoring one of my middle school friends in math, he often would say that he just didn’t know what to do. After showing him how to do the problems and enforcing that I believed in him and that he was able to do these problems he began to do better. Not only did he do better, but every time we met he was more eager to work on his studies, and listened more attentively. I could tell by that change in behavior that he believed in me, and believed that I was capable of teaching him what he needed to know. That is one of the most encouraging feelings I’ve come to know. In the classroom, we have to treat all of our students that way if we want them to succeed and believe in us as their teacher. The last main point that Pausch makes is “Apologize when you screw up, focus on other people”. Often times we mess up. I know I mess up on a regular basis. It is part of being human. However, we have to be able to recognize when we screw up and be able to apologize for our mess ups and continue on our learning walk and our everyday walk. Students often get frustrated when they are working on problems and make mistakes. This can cause them to become discouraged and not want to learn anymore. We, as educators, need to show students that everyone makes mistakes because of the simple fact that we are all human. If we can allow our students to see us accept our flaws and mistakes, then they are more likely to accept theirs as well and be able to move on from their mistakes.

   The amazing thing about this lecture is that it is applicable to our everyday lives, even outside of the classroom. We face many of the things he mentioned on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. Another thing is that Pausch gave this lecture for his students, not for us. He was focused on bettering his students, not himself. As teachers, we should always focus on our students, rather than ourselves. This was a great lecture that is very beneficial to the classroom learner and the teacher as well.