Hello, my name is Richard and I am in the 422A course taught by Professor Jeff Heil. Believe it or not I am a native Californian born and raised in Escondido, California. I hate to admit it but I am 58 years old and am returning to college in pursuit of a second career. I attended Felicita Elementary school in Escondido up until 4th grade then upon our family moving to the southeast side of Escondido I completed the 5th and 6th grades at Juniper Elementary School. It was anticipated I would attend Grant Junior High ( today know as a middle school) located in the northern part of the town but a new junior high was built on the westside and since I lived in that district , the Del Dios District, I attended the 7th and 8th grade at Del Dios Junior High. Upon graduating I was on to high school to Escondido High School or so I thought. A new high school was completed in Escondido called Orange Glen High School. The district lines were once again redrawn and most of the friends I made at Del Dios went to Escondido High but I went Orange Glen ( bummer-I thought). At Orange Glen I made many friends and acquaintances . Since I was very involved in athletics one of my highlights at OGHS was defeating the powerhouse Escondido High Cougar football team. This was the very first time we competed against eachother. The team went on to become CIF San Diego County football champions. This was 1968. I enjoyed athletics but was not a bigtime college athelete so I decided to attend Palomar Junior College in San Marcos , California and participated in both football and baseball. I completed my freshman and sophomore years at Palomar J.C. and received a baseball-football scholarship to Southern Colorado State College in Pueblo,Colorado ( now USC- University of Colorado. I use this as a joke sometime because the school has changed its name to USC- University of Southern Colorado. I graduated with a BA in Mathematics. After Pueblo I came back to California and enrolled at San Diego State, San Diego,California to take some courses for the fun of it .I stayed for 1 year then decided to enroll in a Teacher Credential program at USIU, San Diego, California. I nearly completed the full year but had to drop out. I knew teaching was where I wanted to be but became involved in the the real estate business/market for 30+ years and am now returning.
Although I enjoy working with technology I have very limited time with it. I currently work on a PC with Microsoft XP and Office ( I believe) 02 .I use the email quite a bit, search the internet for information , work with word processing and have explored some excel and power point. However, I am not confident on the latter two. In using WORD I have made some brochures and flyers. I am not a "gadget" person and probably will not get an IPOD. I do download music, however, but just keep it on my computer or burn a copy of CD for my personal use. I realize the fantastic potential of technology and I do want to learn to use it more for my personal use and especially for classroom activities.
What stood out to me when I read The Mission Statement were the words collaboratively, thoughtful educators and life-long learning. Though the focus of this statement is on students this statement touches everyone. We all as human beings need each other to grow , improve, develop, learn ...you name it we are in this together. We all need to find common ground and cooperate to transform our society. We must all be committed to bettering our way of like and it is a constant and life-long endeavor. If we as teachers and citizens of this earth can understand this " shared governance" and relay this to students there is a wonderful future out there for all of us.
to transform
