Blog Post #8

I really enjoyed Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture on achieving childhood dreams, which he gave at Carnegie Mellon University. It was very inspiring to listen to his story and see his outlook on life, even when he knew he was dying. If you would like to read his story, you can read it here. I think we can learn a lot about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch. I will start at the beginning of his talk to address most of the points Pausch makes during his lecture that he used to achieve his dreams. At the end, I will address what we can learn about teaching and learning from the tools he used to achieve his own dreams.

Pausch outlined his talk before hand. Pausch had 6 childhood dreams: being in zero-gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals, and being a Disney Imagineer. He achieved most of these dreams; the dreams that he didn’t quite achieve, he learned a lot from the path he took.

His first dream was being in zero-gravity. He achieved this dream by riding the “vomit comet”. This was sponsored by NASA. This plane takes a path as shown below. At 20 to 45 seconds, there is zero-gravity in the plane. Some of his students won a contest to ride in the “vomit comet”. Pausch, however, could not join them because he was a professor. He learned that a journalist was allowed to go with the students. So, he resigned for a short time as a professor and applied to be a journalist. Lo and behold, he was able to go with his students to ride on the “vomit comet”. What we can take from this first dream, and from most of these dreams, is that persistence and creativity is key. Without these, he wouldn’t have been able to join his students in this once in a lifetime opportunity or achieving his first childhood dream.

The second dream Pausch had was to play in the NFL. This was one of the two dreams he did not achieve. However, he did learn a lot from this journey. He joined a football team when he was 9 and he was "the smallest person on the entire team". He learned two lessons from his time in football. The first was from his first day at practice. When he and his teammates came to practice, the coach didn't bring any footballs. They asked the coach why and the coach replied, “How many men are on a football field at one time?” The kids replied, “22.” The coach asked, “How many people are touching the football at any given time?” “1.” “Right, then we will be working on what the other 21 people will be doing.” The other thing he learned from football was from one of his assistant coaches. His coach was on his back all practice and his assistant coach mentioned it. Pausch agreed and his assistant coach replied that it was a good thing that he was on him. He told him "When you screw up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up." Pausch expanded on that by saying, "Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you." Pausch got a lot out of the experience of playing football without playing in the NFL. He said that “experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

His third dream was to publish an article in the World Book Encyclopedia. Once he had gotten to a good standing because of his virtual reality projects, they called him and asked him to do an article on it to be published in it. If you go look up "virtual reality" in the World Book Encyclopedia, then you will find his article in it.

His fourth dream was to be Captain Kirk. This of course is not really possible. But he could do the next best thing: meet Captain Kirk. He did how ever get to meet William Shatner who played Captain Kirk. Pausch taught classes on creating virtual realities. He ended up making a virtual reality of the cabin of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and William Shatner was able to experience it. It was a really cool experience for him that Schatner sought him out. What I really liked that Pausch said was that Captain Kirk wasn’t the smartest person on the ship, but he had the leadership qualities that the rest of the crew on the Enterprise did not have. This made him an important asset on the Enterprise.

Pausch’s fifth dream was to win stuffed animals. This was a very interesting, maybe a little mundane, dream. He did, however, achieve this dream as well. He wanted to be one of those guys that you see with those really big stuffed animals. Well, he became like one of those guys and he won A LOT of animals. Below are two pictures of the stuffed animals he brought with him to the lecture to give away so a few people could have part of him.

His sixth dream was to become a Disney Imagineer. This dream was a very hard dream to achieve. Pausch made a reference to the brick walls in life at this point. The brick walls in life “are there to “let us prove how badly we want things.” He applied to become an Imagineer after he graduated from getting his PhD at Carnegie Mellon. Disney rejected him with the nicest rejection letter he had ever received. A few years later, Disney was in the process of making a virtual attraction for Aladdin. At the same time, Pausch was asked to brief the U.S. Secretary of Defense on virtual reality. He contacted Disney because he knew that they had one of the best systems in the world. They eventually agreed. He was linked through to Jon Snoddy, who was in charge of the Imagineers at Disney. He went and met with him for lunch. He asked about coming to work with him and Snoddy’s reply was “…you’re in the business of telling stuff and we’re in the business of keeping secrets.” He also taught Pausch, “Wait, and people will surprise you.” They eventually signed a legal contract and, to make a long story short, he was able to work with the Imagineers. He was offered a position at the end of the project, which he declined. He continued to work a little bit with the Imagineers, but he continued to teach.

There is a lot we can learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch. Fundamentals are the not so fun things to learn anything. Fundamentals are the support system for the hard stuff later on. If you don't learn how to add, how are you going to do any sort of calculus problem? Without learning words, how are you going to write a 1,500 word essay in English? No, they are not fun, but they are VERY important. All that is needed is some persistence. Persistence is very important. Never give up and keep up the dedication. Dedication is very important for teaching and learning. Dedication is needed to continue on when you are faced with a difficult situation. When school gets hard, dedication is needed to continue to study and do work for school. Something that helps your dedication is your outlook. Pausch compares it to either being a Tigger or an Eeyore. It is your decision on your outlook is and it can be changed. He also talks about how support from others helps a lot. If a teacher encourages a struggling student, it tells the student that their teacher cares about that student and how they do in their school work. If the teacher stops doing that, then the teacher has given up on the student. When you are working in a team setting, which takes place as a student and a teacher, support is needed throughout the group. He also gives great advice: there is a good way and a bad way to say “I don't know.” It is more helpful to say “I don’t know” in a good way. Both teachers and students need to be able to say “I don’t know" if they don’t know something. He mentions that “as a teacher, you are enabling childhood dreams.” What a statement. What an inspiration. “The feeling that you have done something to make other people happy is priceless.” I believe every word of that. I know that it is true. We also need to help others. That “is what everyone should be doing.” People that help us are teachers, mentors, friends, and colleagues. His advice to get people to help you succeed is to “tell the truth, be earnest, apologize when you mess up, and focus on others, not yourself.” Doing this will help you build connections and make friends, which helps in the teaching and learning process by having some resources and a system of people to depend on. The brick walls in our lives show us how badly we want something. Being able to teach their students valuable information as well as learning from their students is valuable for teachers. Teachers will overcome whatever obstacle to achieve that dream. Students have many dreams. It is a teacher’s job to help achieve their dreams by helping students figure out who they are. Students learn a lot from teachers, but they can also teach their teachers. They can teach and remind them why they do what they do. Overcoming whatever brick walls they have is part of life. It is our job to use that perseverance, that determination, that helpfulness, that gratitude and that drive that helps us become who we are meant to be. If the outcome didn't turn out the way you thought it would, that's ok. "Experience is what you get when you didn't quite et what you wanted." That is most of what I learned from Randy Pausch.

R.I.P. Randy Pausch. He is one of my role models in my life now. I hope this gives a peak at who he is. If you have not seen his lecture, it can be found here. It is one of those life changing moments, like those moments he had in his life that changed his life for the rest of his life.