My name is Jerry Speedon and I am a 34 year husband and father of three. I have two daughters and one son. The oldest is Isabella who is 10, the middle child Natalia who is 7, and the youngest of the three is Emilio or “E” and he is 5. My wife, Christine, and I have been married for the past 12 years. I have lived and grown up in Oceanside, California my entire life. I attended public school in the Oceanside Unified School district throughout my K-12 scholastic career and graduated from Oceanside High School in 1990.
My experience in technology has grown tremendously over the course of the last 22 months and I consider myself a PC person. Simply because it is all I know!!!! In the spring of 2002, I was hired for my first teaching position in Perris, California. The school was located in a low income area and the school itself only had one computer per classroom. Therefore, we did not do much computer work with the students and the lab was not large enough to accommodate my entire class. I was not comfortable working on computers on my own. I would always seem to run into unfamiliar territory and my greatest fear was loosing the data I had already entered. Therefore, teaching children to use computers felt like a futile effort. The lack of resources at the school enabled me to sustain from using a lot of technology within my lessons. I did learn to use the computer for grades and a few other tools, but that was as far as I took technology in my classroom. This went on for about 3 years. As I think back now, I feel like I did a great disservice to those students during that span. I left the classroom in the fall of 2005 due to district cut backs and entered a position in sales. The first thing they gave me in my new position was a lap top computer to work on in the comfort of my home. This was not comforting! My first thought after this was that I was going to either sink or swim. I use the computer in my office or out in the field multiple times on a daily basis. After asking many questions, sometimes the same questions just on a different day, I began to understand how easy the computer can be, as well as, visualize the advantages that technology can provide for students in school. I do not have the same feelings about using computer technology as I did 5 years ago. I am currently trying to get back into the field of teaching elementary education and look forward to passing on my newly learned technology skills and to my future students.
The section of the CSUSM mission statement that speaks to me is stated in the first sentence. I believe in the idea of preparing an educator to use technology in his or her own everyday practices. This creates the possibility of their own students to apply the same efforts into their education and life. That is a primary goal of mine when I attain my goal of reentering the classroom as an educator.
