My Last Lecture

For the last couple of weeks with my 8th grade, I wanted to come up with activities that would be meaningful and reflective. Well, that's certainly easier said than done...

That's when I re-stumbled upon Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture." The version I am showing my students on Monday (and the one below in this blog post) is a shortened "recap" done on Oprah. (You can see the full length version HERE.)

Of course! I could have the students make their own "last lectures" - two to three minutes with a focus on family, time, and faith. 

But this meant I had to make my own version first...which I spent a good chunk of this evening accomplishing. It's by no means even close to perfect (or even good) - there's a lot I had to leave out. Two minutes is such a short amount of time when trying to convey life lessons...

We'll see how the students do. Usually on projects with iMovie they end up blowing me away by their ability to navigate the app, add music, and do other things, so let's hope that's the case for this one last time. I wonder what their messages to the world will be...

Pray for our Priests

For the first time in quite some time, I had the 8th graders' attention.

Now, I could chalk that up to the fact that, due to the rotating schedule, I had them before lunch (which does not happen the rest of the week), OR I could chalk it up to the fact that this video about the priesthood got their attention.

After watching the video multiple times myself, I'd like to go with the latter.

The 8th grade is in the midst of a unit on vocations, so yesterday we took a deeper look at one of the four vocations: priesthood. We did some other videos and activities too, but this video was, by far, the one that held their attention the most. After the video (about 12 minutes in length) finished, I asked them to give their initial reactions and to share what they noticed about the seminarians & priests in the video.

One comment stood out (and I wasn't sure anyone would necessarily pick up on it, even though it was pretty obvious): They all look happy. Darn right they do - they're full of the love of God, and through their vocation they are sharing that love with others. They are amazing and such a true blessing to the Catholic faithful.

We ended class with a prayer for priests. I invite you to pray it too: