Hey fokes! My name is Erika Nicole Redlinger and this is my story so far......

      I was born in San Antonio, Texas. Two years later I moved to the great surf town of Cardiff By The Sea near San Diego, California. A few years later I moved to the Midwest. I lived about 20 minutes outside of St. Louis, Missouri in the "unincorporated" town of Ballwin. Kindergarten through 5th grade I attended Oak Brook Elementary School. I went to Southwest Middle School for 6th through 8th grade. I was all ready to start my freshmen year of high school at Parkway South High when I found out I would be moving back to California. This time we settled in Encinitas, California where I attended and graduated from La Costa Canyon High School. Unsure of my plans for University and fear of anything standardized I enrolled at Palomar College. I received my A.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences. I then transferred to San Diego State University. Along with the transfer I moved to Pacific Beach, California (only so I could to be closer to school of course). Two years later I received my B.A. in Psychology. I took off to Europe right after graduation to work at a sports summer camp for children ages 7 to 17. Once I returned to the United States  I worked in a year long preschool program in Encinitas. Last summer was an intern working with high school students at Loyola University Chicago. It took all of that to make me realize that I wanted to be an educator. This realization led to me to California State University San Marcos where I am currently pursuing a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential.

     

     On the technology continuum I fall under Master of; texting, facebooking, e-mailing, googling, skyping and navigating my way through the Netflix's website. As for everything else in the technology world I have little to no idea what I am doing. My elementary school set up a computer lab when I was in first grade; although state-of-the-art at the time the computers would be considered extremely basic by today's standards. They had no color and the smallest screen ever, remember the 8-inch floppy discs that where actually floppy? As my schooling progressed, so did computers. I wish I could say the same about my skills. By middle school I was decent at Microsoft Word. And by high school I was learning the basics of Excel and Powerpoint. Somehow I got through my undergrad without ever having to use Powerpoint. As a lab assistant at SDSU I had to use Excel for data entry. After being out of school for almost two years I am afraid that my Excel skills have been reduced to less than a rudimentary level. With technology playing such a huge role in this generation, I understand the importance of being fluent in its many uses. However, that does not change the fact that it is overwhelming and makes my head hurt.

    

     "Collaboratively transform public education... committed to diversity, educational equity... and life long learning..." are parts of the College of Education Mission Statement that speak to me. Over the years I have become more and more worried about the public education system in America. When I was in elementary school there were so many classes, resources and extracurricular opportunities for students. As the years past classes were fewer and bigger, resources were being taken away, and extracurricular opportunities were dwindling one by one due to budget cuts. Now, more than ever, the public education system needs a massive transformation. A transformation with an emphasis on diversity, educational equity and life long learning. Not every student is the same and as an educator I have to adjust my way of teaching to best suit each child. As an educator I am a person of many roles; these roles go well beyond the walls of a classroom and the days of a school year. As the American historian and writer, Henry Brooks Adams, once stated "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops".