What if, as psychologists and adult educators advocate, a person chose a life where his motivation for the work itself determined what he did? Living a Motivated Life: A Memoir and Activities follows the author through forty years, revealing how he selected vocational pursuits guided by his understanding of intrinsic motivation and transformative learning. As a compass for relevant decisions, these ideas gave energy and purpose to how he lived, and an instinct as sure as sight for the future. Written with nuance, humor, and unpredictability, this story renders how he came to appreciate learning for the pleasure of learning. Facing similar challenges as those of today’s first generation college students, the memoir narrates his unexpected college enrollment, his friendship with an ancient history professor, and his triumphs and travails as teacher, psychologist, human relations specialist, psychotherapist, and adult educator. This is the first memoir of someone who consciously chose to lead a professional life to experience flow on a daily basis. It is an important step in the integration and evolution of intrinsic motivation theory and transformative learning. But it reaches beyond this outcome, sharing how the author aspired to be better at what he valued and showing how he discovered and extended these ideas to others.

Using family photographs and quotes from her books, the author provides glimpses into her life.

Over the course of a year writer David Shribman questioned virtually everyone he encountered about the role teachers had played in their lives. The result is this extrordinary collection of personal remembrances of teachers, relayed by people from all walks of life. Readers will be inspired by the Montreal bookseller whose math teacher taught statistics using cards and dice, by the second-grade teacher who let a young George Stephanopoulos go to the library whenever he was bored in class, and by Sister Patricia, a favorite teacher of former Secretary Of Labor Alexis Herman, who once told her, "You can fly, by that cocoon has to go." These 365 short testimonials offer a tribute to teachers for each day of the year. With accounts from Geena Davis, Clarence Thomas, Norman Schwarzkopf, and others, I Remember My Teacher... will move readers with inspiring stories of their most influential teachers, professors, and coaches.

Shunryu Suzuki is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West. To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family. Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit. Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."

Educator, journalist, and activist for social and educational reform, Fanny Jackson Coppin had a passion for and dedication to her work that foreshadowed the contributions of many African-American women. Born into slavery, Coppin was the second African-American woman to graduate from Oberlin College. A noted classical scholar, she devoted her life to the education of African-American children. This volume, originally published posthumously in 1913, is a four-part work composed of an autobiographical sketch (including an account of her classical studies at Oberlin and her role as teacher and first black woman principal of a high school - the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia); an essay setting forth her views and theories on education; a travelogue on her journeys to England and South Africa; and a description of her work as a missionary and educational activist in South Africa.