RANDY PAUSCH

The Last Lecture

Watching Randy Pausch give his Last Lecture, one would have to be cold-hearted not to be moved by the dramatic “now” of his presentation. The pause button was often used to allow tears to be wiped away. But I also sensed that this man loved life and learning and teaching so much that he could have presented the same story even is he hadn’t known that death was impending and final.

Two points presented by Randy Pausch jumped out at me. The first was his belief that “the best way to teach is having the students think they are learning something else.” He called this “the mind fake.” I try to implement this in every class I teach. It wasn’t always that way though.

When I began teaching more than 25 years ago, I used the assigned textbooks and found the students and I often struggled through the material. When I switched to creating my own materials, the classroom atmosphere changed for the better. As a teacher of English as a second language, I have taught students from 26 countries over the years. Many students were from vastly different cultures, had different customs, religions and more. This meant there was no homogeneous framework to fall back on. However, I discovered there was one trait that was truly universal: everyone learns better when they are relaxed and engaged. By sending my students out to an interesting neighborhood in San Francisco to interview Americans on an assigned topic, they barely realized they were learning a complex language like English. They were doing so in a way that was natural through a process of socialization, rather than book-bound mechanics.

In addition, by arranging peer groups of four students, the same number Randy Pausch used in his projects, stress levels dissipate by allowing students to interact without teacher interference. The goal of all these interactive activities is to produce “the fun while learning something hard” theory that Randy stipulated was paramount in any learning process.

The second point that influenced me in Randy’s presentation was the moment when a student taught the teacher.  When one of his female students asked where the fun was in a project, Randy said he liked moving toy soldiers around a virtual landscape. She responded that telling a story would be more important to her. As a woman I immediately understood this response. Much of the techno-wizardry of a few decades ago were created by and aimed at males. Times are changing, and it is so encouraging to see the gender balance that is beginning to emerge.

I chose to discuss these two points, but there are so many other powerful messages in the presentation that could be highlighted: listen to feedback, do things—not always book learning, be good at something that will make you valuable, the brick wall analogy and more.

Maybe the best message was the simplest: help others to enable their dreams. As a teacher I get to try this in every class. Thank you Randy Pausch.