Living for Today

In Today is the Present from Cool Cat Teacher Blog, coolcatteacher@gmail.com (Victoria A Davis, Cool Cat Teacher) shares,

“Occasionally, I’ve seen motivational speakers encourage the audience to write their own eulogy. They’ll ask something like, ‘What is it that you want people to say about you at your funeral?’ After all, when you know what you want to be said at your death, you know what you want to do in life.”

I hope people would say that I was a good person who cared about others. I would want them to say that I was honest and fair and trustworthy. I would hope former students would say that they knew I cared about them and made a difference in their lives. I hope someone would say how much I loved learning about new things. I loved to hike and travel. My knitting and spinning yarn gave me such pleasure too.

I think this would be such a great exercise to have students complete. I would have them write their own eulogy as if they died when they were 100 years old. What would they want to accomplish in the 100 years of their life? They could break it down by special events in their lives or they could write it by the decades of their lives.

I think it would be fun to let them have conversations in small groups to get their minds thinking about all the possibilities. Then they can narrow it down to what is important to them and not just what other people mentioned.

I would have them write a specific number of things or just let them write as many things as they think would be important for their eulogy.

For those that have trouble writing, they could pretend they are a family member giving the eulogy and give a speech.

Other could have visual aids to go with their speech such as a PowerPoint presentation or a poster.

I would encourage the students to keep a copy of this and look at it every 5 years.

-->

What would you like to accomplish before you die? Please share.