Blog Post #6

Randy Pausch Last Lecture

After watching, Randy Pausch's Last Lecture at the University of Carnegie-Mellon. His last lecture was very inspiring to me. My first reaction was that I would dread watching this hour long video but once he began talking I became interested into his speech. I really enjoyed learning a few things from Randy Pausch. At the beginning of this video he explains his childhood dreams, how to enable the dreams of others, and the lessons he had learned. Randy Pausch was a very enthusiastic and inspiring professor during his lectures. He talks about helping others and what people need to know to achieve their dreams.

Pauschs' did a lot of dreaming as a child. One of the dreams that really caught my attention is when he said, "I wanted to play in the NFL." Although he never played in the NFL, he did learn something from the hard work that his coach introduced to him. He believed football helped him get through life because of the fundamentals he had learned. He goes through a list of childhood dreams and he proceeds to tell how he accomplished them all. The most outstanding part of his lecture is about the brick wall. He says, "brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." His perspective is if you want something badly enough, you should go after it. Just because something is standing in your way does not mean there is not a away around it, you will just have to search to find it it. Sometimes in life everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong, so it is better to prepare for the worse.

In my future classroom, I believe this is something that I can learn from him. I know I will have many bumps and difficult obstacles on the road towards success as a great teacher. I have highly believed in, "if there's a will, there's a way." This is something else that I consider really important to instill in students and also in all different areas of life as well. I want to teach students that it is very important to go after what you believe in or dream about. Every single person has to work hard to achieve and fulfill their lifetime dreams. I want to be the teacher that my students consider fun, I believe it is extremely important to make learning fun. I also think that students retain more information, when they are interested in what they are doing. We as elementary educators should never lose our child like wonders.

One last thing that I certainly agree on with him is on feedback. This is a great piece of advice to accept and appreiciate corrections. As a teacher I find it highly successful and valuable when he says, "we should focus more on others than ourselves." We as teachers are there to help students to achieve their lifetime dreams. It is my goal to never give up on my students or complain about anything. Instead of complaining I will only push harder. I want to be the teacher that the students will remember later on down the road. Overall, I really enjoyed watching this inspiring video. I gained some great knowledge for teaching as well as life in general.