Blog Post # 10

In the video Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, He tells us that motivation is key to teaching. Randy tells us his life story about how he was given only 3-6 months to live due to tumors in his liver. Randy wanted to spend his last days working to inspire and motivate others with his last lecture. In his video he discusses three main ideas.  The first thing he spoke about is how important it is to always hold on to your childhood dreams. He says, "We should never lose your childhood dreams, always take them with you when you grow older. He explains this and shows how he achieved each of his dreams and what he took from the experiences. "Experience  is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." He tells us one of his dreams that he did achieve was to be a Disney Imagineer. When he was offered the position he was a professor  so he approached two of the Deans at the college, both of the deans told him I don't know for an answer, although one of the dean's said I don't know but tell me more. Randy goes on to explain that there is a right and wrong way to use I don't know as an answer. He also added that the walls holding us back while trying to achieve our dreams are there for us to prove how badly we want what we want. He then discusses how to enable childhood dreams of others. He created a program used to create virtual words where he had fifty students and divided into groups and given two weeks to compare complete an assignment. After the two weeks were up they were given a new group to do the same project he was blown away by the outcome. He was told by his mentors that what they did was pretty good but they could do better. He said that the advice was great because it wasn't good for the students if he sat the bar for them. He explained that he saw the achievements of his students were endless by not setting the bar. The success of that class grew and turned into a school wide experiment once a year. He has now passed his program off to someone else to control and it has grown tremendously. This achievement will be his legacy. He says he describes himself as Moses that he can see the promised land but will never get to go. He then discusses the lessons learned through all of these experiences. He says that along the road to achieving your dreams you have to be thankful for and realize what and who helped you along the way. Even if you don't realize it at the time, anyone along the way could help you. My favorite part of his lecture was when he said always remember the importance of having fun and never lose the child in you! He goes on to say that loyalty is a two way street, be honest, be earnest, never give up, always apologize when your wrong, and always remember to follow your dreams. Randy said so much with all of those words in the last two sentences. He says his lecture is not about how you achieve your dreams, its about how to lead your life and that the talk was bout for his audience but for his kids.

I think everything he said in his speech was words to live by not only for future teachers but for every one! As future educators we could take all of his advice on the road we are traveling. I think we should all follow his advice especially about always having fun and to always keep a child like passion. Another lesson would be to always be a motivator and never let students give up on their dreams!