Blog Post #7

This week, I enjoyed watching Mr. Randy Pausch's last lecture, Achieving your Childhood Dream Mr. Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In his lecture, Mr. Pausch presented a lot of great teaching techniques that I could use in my future class. I can tell by just observing him for about five minutes that he is a great professor because he kept his students' engaged in his humorous personality and stories. Although his childhood dreams were quite funny, I like how each dream had a lesson or purpose. For instance, Mr. Pausch had dreamed of playing in the NFL as a child. Although he was not as good, his coach, Coach Graham, was constantly pushing him to play better by telling him " do it again, harder". As a child, you would think that the only reason why your coach would push you so hard is to just be mean to you, but that is not the case. When someone is pushing you to do better at something that you are not good at, he or she really cares about you and wants to see you succeed. Mr. Pausch related this concept to teaching our students. When are students are constantly making mistakes, we, as teachers, have to push our students to do better in order for them to be successful. I totally agree with Mr. Pausch because for some of out students we, teachers, are the only supporters/motivators they have. I plan to continue this concept throughout my teaching career.