It’s been slow enough around EMUTalk.org lately and it promises to get even slower soon: my family is about to embark on a summer vacation of sorts, one where our son gets to hang around the grandparents and fellow grandchildren, and where my wife and I get to go to Las Vegas. It’s only a vacation of sorts for me because I’m still teaching online this summer, which means I’ll be spending a fair amount of time with the laptop in the hotel (though probably not in the casino). And that means that I will be close enough to my computer to check in on EMUTalk.org once in a while too.
So, EMUTalk.org is only going on semi vacation. I probably won’t be posting for the next 12 or so days (well, unless something really dramatic/interesting happens), but I will probably be approving comments once a day. So be patient.
Anyway, I thought I’d leave everyone with something inspiring. By now, I am sure that most of you have heard of Randy Pausch, the computer science professor at Carnergie Mellon University who died last week. Many of you have probably already seen his “last lecture” on YouTube, but I hadn’t until recently (I had heard of it, of course, and seen clips, but not the whole thing). Here it is:
I decided to watch the whole thing because of an email I received from Charles Lipson, who is a professor at the University of Chicago and who wrote what I thought was a pretty smart article published in the Chicago Tribune, “‘Last lecture’ a lesson in great teaching too.” In his lecture, Pausch talks a lot about “head fakes,” the things we are trying to teach people indirectly. Well, one of those head fakes he doesn’t talk about, as Lipson points out, is how good teaching (along with good learning) is supposed to work. As Lipson writes:
Good teaching points students toward important questions, gives them the tools they need to inquire and inspires them to continue exploring for themselves. Ultimately, every teacher lets go and hopes the students can proceed on their own—and hopes that they will want to.
That achievement usually lies hidden behind classroom doors. What Pausch did was throw open those doors and show the world what a great teacher does. Perched on the edge of life itself, he asked hard questions and gave straight answers. It was his way of prodding us, gently but urgently, to search our own lives for our own lessons. That is teaching at its very best.
Well said. So something positive and not cynical to dwell on for at least a few days.
It’s been pretty quiet around town/campus lately, so I don’t have a lot of news/reasons for blogging around here right now. Besides, isn’t the weather too nice to be doing this?
