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Fully Functioning and the Quest for the Meaning of Life

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Fully Functioning Human Being 
and the quest for the meaning of life.



In this little trip of education, I have taken a path down Educational Psychology. In this trek we talk about many of the greats; Maslow, Locke, Erikson, Bloom. All of these names have so much to say about the way we teach, motivate, and demonstrate. In the quest for an A, I am always looking for a different voice saying more. I have landed on Scott Barry Kauffman. You should read his stuff. He is a modern day Ed Psyc guy that, in my opinion, is evolving the way we should approach education.

Due to insane back problems that lead to surgery 2 weeks ago, I had to drop my semester and "rest". But my dedicated readers know, that really doesn't "happen". I am always looking into this, trying out that...helping to plan another edcamp. I just love being involved.

Well, a tweet from Kauffman caught my eye this morning. He linked an article that he had read...
I wasn't even through the first paragraph when I saw another name we study, Karl Rogers. I yeall out to my husband the line in the article about the "fully functioning person" and the conversation took off.

Sidebar - Travis' grandfather passed away last weekend. He man was amazing. He was literally into all of the things we read about in how American developed through the 30's to today. He life is like an action-adventure meets romantic comedy then what ever the hell genre The Notebook is...the bawl your eyes out genre. None-the-less, Trav and I have been talking for a week now about the natural things of life and death that follow an event like this.

So in the conversation about fully functioning person, we quickly moved past the day to day Special Education life skills type stuff and onto the word fully. The idea of fully ran onto things like a fully invested wife, fully engaged mother, fully aware educator, fully dedicated to learning...wow, I was immediately exhausted by all of the things I was fully trying to be. And then all of a sudden was made to feel (in my own head) inadequate. I started thinking what does it mean to be a fully invested wife? Could I do more? A fully engaged mom...could I do more? A fully aware educator...Tyler Bridges would tell you I have a ways to go ;-). How can we get more fully functioning than we are. Then of course you start hinging about making goals and setting check points. I want to______ by ______.

So the question is...think hard here.
1. What is it you want; what will make you live to be a more fully functioning person?
2. Will there be checkpoints?
3. When are your deadlines? 3 yrs? 5 yrs?  
4. What is the end game? What to you think will come of it?


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