Blog Post #10!

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture was extremely enjoyable to me. He had me right from the start. He opened with a great attitude and was very engaging. Pausch talked about keeping your childlike wonder and always having fun. He compared this to being a Tigger.

He says that by having this mindset he was able to live his life to the fullest even though he was only given three to six months to live. He kept a positive attitude and his childlike wonder, he was a Tigger. I think this is an awesome mindset to have. Whether you are given a short time to live or not. We are not promised tomorrow, or this afternoon. We should strive to keep our imaginations running full speed and to always keep that childlike wonder. That would be a fabulous thing to instill in your students. The joy of life itself. We always focus on the standards we are meant to teach, but as educators we are also supposed to prepare our children for the world and what better way than instilling a joy of life in them!

Pausch made a statement that really stuck out to me, "The best way to teach somebody, is to have them think that they are learning something else.". Genius. Simply genius. In order to teach our student's what they need to know we need to make them think they are learning something they want to know. I think the best way to do this is to make what they need to know into what they want to know. Pausch taught a class at Carnegie Mellon University that was a project based learning class. You have to make learning fun! This is even true in a class full of adults, Personally, I learn better, faster and more when it's something I am enjoying versus something I am not a fan of. Imagine how this works for children. Children are driven by curiosity, but they aren't curious about the boring things, about the things that aren't fun. You have to make it fun. I think this is definitely something Pausch strongly believed in. Later in his lecture he mentions the "head fake". The "head fake" is having the students play a fun game or activity that has a life lesson behind it. A hidden meaning. Making them think they are learning something other then the actual lesson. Teaching them life lessons such as, team work and social skills, all while they think they are simply playing a game.

Dr. Pausch also spent a lot of time talking about dreams. He used examples of his own life stories which definitely kept me engaged in what he was saying. We all dream especially as children because children have such active imaginations. Dr. Pausch says he never gave up on his dreams. He describes all the dreams he had as a child. He dreamed he had zero gravity, that he played football for the National League, that he was an author of an article in the World Book Encyclopedia. He even dreamed he was Captain Kirk! He says that it is important to have a specific dream that you are striving for. No matter how silly someone else may think your dream is, it is your dream. Never stop until you reach it in a way that satisfies you. You have to believe in yourself and your dreams. You have to believe they will come true. As teachers, we will all sorts of crazy dreams from our students. No matter how impossible they may seem we must encourage them to reach them. We must assist our students in reaching their dreams, by doing this we are teaching them how to apply classroom knowledge into the real world.


Pausch taught me a lot. He taught his students in a way that they were able to enjoy what they were learning. I think it is so so very important to engage and inspire students and the only way to do that is to make learning fun! You have to teach your students that, they have to understand that you don't have to read a textbook to learn otherwise they will stop learning when we stop teaching. We need lifelong learners if we want to succeed and if we want the world to move forward. You can never stop learning and your desire to learn can never fade.

Randy Pausch did an excellent job with this lecture. He kept me engaged for the full hour and he even made me laugh but most importantly I walked away with a desire. A desire to make learning fun and a desire to inspire. This lecture was given on September 18, 2007, unfortunately Randy Pausch lost his fight to cancer in July 2008. This lecture gives so much encouragement and is so passionate that even in his death Randy Pausch is still inspiring and making a difference in the lives of teachers and future teachers. At least he did for one.