Blog Post #6

Our assignment for this post was to watch The Last Lecture. This is a lecture given by a man who was a fabulous educator, inventive and innovative, even before what really set him apart occurred. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He then gave as many lectures as possible, and this is considered his most famous.
The Last Lecture


As I stated in an earlier blog post, this is not my first interaction with the materials of Mr. Pausch. This man was an inspiration until the day he died and I am sure I am not the only one in the "future generation" of teachers that gives him the credit, if not for giving us the dream, of at least showing us what kind of teacher we should aspire to be. He overcame obstacles that most of could not even imagine overcoming while sitting in a hospital bed...and he did while smiling and continuing his mission in life, teaching. While many of us would allow the troubles he faced to get him down or change anything about his life other than, if possible bettering him as a person. 1:11 seconds into this video he calls his killing disease the "elephant in the room" and flippantly mentions it, almost as if to get it out of the way for the 'real issues', his lesson. He then continues to talk about the fact that when things in life happen(bad things), if you continue to move on as if they haven't happened, you aren't in denial you are simply strong enough to allow life to happen, not let life happen "to you".

That in itself is one of the most important things I feel I learned from him, aside from just the personal lesson of overcoming ones obstacles, is simply that in order to be a successful educator you must either, set aside you troubles and not allow them to harm you, or even better: do as he did and allow them to BETTER you.

One other especially important thing I learned(not just from other explorations of him but specifically from this video was the way he allowed just the right level of personal information to make the students love and make him a "real" human in their eyes. He manages to do this in small ways, discussing his family, showing personal pictures and props, or even doing "young" things like light cursing. The most important part of this 'lesson' is that he manages to do this all while maintaining a level of appropriate to his students.

The last thing I learned from him was the way he validated himself to his students. This is a difference between his audience and my own future 'audience' while he had to think of the "skeptics" or ("cynics" as he puts it) because that is the way high school, college, and maybe even middle school. I will be in elementary school, where for the most part the kids still think their teacher can do no wrong. I will still want to implement these techniques, however. He uses real life stories and confessions, along with pictures and props. My favorite example of this is when he shows the giant stuffed animals to the audience to "prove" he won them. Another great way he does this is is by saying "I know this is the way to success because I told others to do this...and look where they are now". He shows this when he shows the video of the students in zero gravity, and also the students at the "hello world" seminar.

All of these techniques are things that make me even more eager to become an educator. I know I will not make the type of difference that Mr. Pausch made, his audience was all ages and world wide. However, if I can make the same level of affect on my small, local, young audience, I will consider my life well lived.