If you haven’t read “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, I can tell you the most important lesson he imparted us.

Head fake.

It’s a sporting analogy in which an athlete moves his head in a way such that his opponent believes that he is about to move in the opposite direction. Randy used this in the context of learning: head fake refers to the thing you aren’t actually aware that you are learning because you think that you are in the middle of learning something else. For instance, Randy’s head fake in regard to his last lecture is that he was in fact giving a speech not for the sake of his audience, but for his three kids.

Poignant, huh?

Anyway, I thought I would share how I applied the concept of head fake recently.

Four boys in my class are from the sepak takraw (a sport in which players kick a rattan ball across the court and try not to let it fall to the ground) team. If they win a match next week, they will be through to the national finals. You can sense that they are hyped up about this.

To capitalise on their energy, I got several students from my class to write simple messages of encouragement to spur the players on. Here are some examples:

We took a class photo after that. The takraw boys were as pleased as punch:

Here’s the head fake. When my students wrote their messages of encouragement, I subtly got them to change the word form of a word so that it would fit the requirements of this year’s Spelling Bee.

So, I got them to write words like international, competition, positively, enthusiastically, among others. Tomorrow, I will send out an email to the entire school, highlighting these words and encouraging them to prepare their own students for the upcoming Spelling Bee.

I’m killing two birds with one stone. Providing emotional support for the four takraw boys as well as promoting the Spelling Bee. Patting myself on the shoulder for being so ingenious!