Blog Assignment #6

     Achieving Your Childhood Dreams Randy Pausch is a powerful and passionate speaker. His excitement and joy are extremely noticeable when he speaks. In his speech, Mr. Pausch is truthfully blunt about things people should strive to obtain in life. He is exceptionally forthright when it comes to speaking about anything in life and even the success and failures it possess.

    Mr. Randy illuminates peoples thoughts about specific goals we all have and personal reflection of thought. For example, I have a goal of being a teacher; however, I never thought about my specific goals of becoming a teacher. After his lecture I determined I want to be a teacher my students enjoy, that they truly learn from, and a successful one at that. After Mr. Pausch’s lecture, I have found the importance of educating my students in having goals and helping them obtain their specific goals they have. I think one of the most important aspects of this video was that goals are not concrete that they can be changed. We can tweak our childish dreams into adult realities, and still reach our goals of the past.

    Another portion of the video I enjoyed was the topic of the brick walls. Brick walls are obstacles to our goals. When we are trying to reach our goals, we run into “brick walls.” We are turned away by the dead end. The purpose of these walls, according to Randy, is to exterminate the people who do not truly want their dreams achieved.  When we reach these “brick walls” we are forced to exam our life and what we really want from it. If we want to sincerely reach our goals, then nothing will stand in our way. We figure out ways to break down those walls or overcome to their resistance. I want my students to understand and instill motivation into my students’ souls. I want to explain to my students that walls can be broken and rebuilt daily, but learning how to keep breaking those walls down is the key. I wish my teachers would have instilled this idea more strongly when I was in school.  

    From this video, I learned several lessons that I want to embed into my classroom. The first lesson is creating a bar for my students to strive for. When I create my bar, I hope my students succeed as Randy’s did in the first two week. The height of the bar is extremely important. If the bar is to low, it could possibly have negative effects on my students. I really want my students to set the bar on their own, but with the guidance of myself. By teaching students to properly set goal and have determination to reach them, then they can properly set their own bar at an appropriate height. Another thing that I think all teachers should remember and keep close to their thoughts is having fun. Mr. Pausch wants teachers to question whether “you are a Tigger or Eeyore?” I refuse to be an Eeyore. As Randy mentioned in the video, maintaining childish wonders is a key to success. If we can remember the feelings we had as children, then we might be able to teach in a more effective manner for our students.  

    The last things I want to mention about the video is, loyalty. Having loyalty to our students will hopefully create a two way loyalty street. Putting our students first and their interest is one of the most important things we can do as teachers. Never give up and never surrender.