Saturday, November 29, 2008

The Last Lecture


After reading Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture," I felt very inspired to not only follow my own dreams, but to enable the dreams of my students. I guess that is my main dream: I want to be a teacher who inspires her students, let them know that nothing is out of reach. In his book, Randy Pausch gave advice on how to overall be an effective teacher.

Here is a list I have comprised about advice he gives to teachers:
1) He mentioned that we need to look for the best in everyone, we just have to wait longer. He quoted his hero from Disney Imagineering saying that "If you wait long enough, people will surprise and impress you." I might have to be patient with my students and colleauges to discover what positive contribution will be to the class.
2)"If at First you don't succeed ....try a cliche" He said that students don't always know them, and are greatly inspired by them. I plan to read some inspirations to my students whenever I can fit it in (hopefully daily).
3)Teach your student that "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted" I need to let my students know that it is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes and failures are learning opportunities and we should present them as such.
4)Make every moment a learning opportunity. After receiving ten year, Randy took his team to Disney World and along the way they topped at universitied to visit computer reseatch groups. Just goes to show that we can incorporate learning with entertainment.
5)You cannot give your students self-esteems "it's something they have to build.....You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just repeat the process."
6)"Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something." We want our students to succeed, but sometimes we have to go through a lot for this to happen.
7) Manage your time wisely and pass this on to your students.
8)"In the end, educators bes serve student by helping them be more self-reflective."

1 comment:

bdepperson said...

There are a lot of very significant life lessons to be learned from this book- and we should try to pass those things on to our students.