Randy Paush's Last Lecture

When I first found out that I had to listen to Randy Paush's Last Lecture I thought, "Who is Randy Paush?" and "Why do I care?". I am happy to say that even I thoroughly enjoyed watching this. Unfortunately for me the morning that I chose to watch it was the same day that my dad passed away 10 years ago. My tears and his message put things back into perspective.

Randy stressed the importance of teaching the fundamentals. Students must learn the basics before they can move on because without a solid foundation learning is not possible. He also mentioned that it is important to teach our students that we are not criticizing them to be mean, we are doing so because we care. If we do not show them where they can improve then they may never recognize the need to do so. And others may not care enough about them to push them to reach their full potential.

Randy also pointed out that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. In other words every experience is life should be a learning experience. And most of what we learn we learn indirectly. This is a very important concept for a teacher to bring into the classroom. Students must always know that they will not always get what they want and they shouldn't think that the world is over because they don't get picked for a particular team or assignment. If they do not get chosen to be on a certain sport team it is okay. They can join other clubs and learn in the process. We learn indirectly by this because we learn important coping skills that will be useful later in life.

Randy discussed that brick walls are put in our way to show us how much we want something. I think that we can all relate to this. A very important concept for us to teach our students. Not everything we want is easy and we do not get everything that we want. Again this is an important thing for young children to learn.

Randy Paush also said to wait long enough and people will impress and surprise you. I can relate to this. I am a Para-educator in a class with K-2 Autistic children. We teach and review concepts and lessons many times daily. I too believe that every moment is a teaching moment and capture every learning opportunity that I can for the students that I work with. Something as simple as "ing" for "swing" in a child with speech deficits is extremely rewarding. This seemingly little response to some, made my day! It makes everything that we go through on a daily basis worth it. This took much hard work on everyone's part who is involved in this student's education. Wait and they will surprise you! It is true!

If you give a student an assignment and they seem to complete it with little effort and in a much shorter amount of time than you expected. Raise the bar, the assignment that you gave was not hard enough. The more you push students the more they will impress you. Your students will not want to let you down. I certainly agree with this idea.