About Me

       Hello! My name is Sarah Roberts. As a Senior at Cal State San Marcos, I am looking forward to graduating with my Literature and Writing degree in May of 2015. After that, I am looking into the Education program here at CSUSM with the idea that I would be in the multiple subject program to eventually teach elementary or middle school students. With the many benefits of teaching as a career, I am considering it seriously, but I am wanting to take courses such as this one, as well as to have time to observe and volunteer in classrooms in order to make sure the career is the right environment for me (as well as hopefully narrow down the age group I prefer to work with!). Being a San Diego native, I am fortunate to have been through the K-12 system throughout one district, the Poway Unified School District. After grade school, I began here at Cal State San Marcos, and here I am now! All through my K-12 career, I constantly heard adults and school faculty mention how the Poway system is one of the best and how I was so lucky to have been going through it. Looking back, I know it is true. I feel like I got a genuinely great education through the public education program. Because of this, I know that overall, I enjoyed school and still do. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I am looking into a career that never truly ends up leaving school. School had its ups and downs, and I usually struggled with the math and some sciences (chemistry in high school was a struggle, for example). I always enjoyed and excelled in English, social sciences, and the arts. So overall, school was definitely a mix of challenge and ease, but most of the challenge I am happy to report was in a constructive and beneficial way.

      As far as technology goes, I do feel that while I am not the best and certainly do not know how to do every task or run certain programs (not saying that I couldn't sit and fiddle with it for a little bit and figure it out, though!), I am somewhere between middle of the road and expert. Kind of like what Adina was saying, I'm still like that little kid, not afraid of technology and figuring out how to work things. I know that some things that you work with on the computer you need to use regularly in order to retain. For example, I learned how to work on Excel during a computers class in high school. Do I remember anything other than the basic SUM anymore? Not at all. Why? Because after that class, I rarely, if ever, used Excel again. I'm bummed because it is a useful tool for many office environments. That being said, I think teaching students how to use important tools for researching or ease of storing useful information or whatever, is beneficial to them because they are the things they will constantly be using throughout their career as students, and perhaps even further on in their lives on their career paths. I say this is especially true with the constantly advancing technological world we live in. I like this so-called "computer revolution", but I do hope that people never let computers take over their own general thinking and knowledge as well as their critical thinking abilities. I do think computers are amazing, though. I like how it helps us acquire information to learn more than was ever available for students before (certainly not anyone under university age).
    I love the part of the CSUSM/SOE mission statement that says, "We serve the School, College, University, and Community". This really speaks to me because this identifies exactly how teaching as a career is ultimately beneficial to its core. Educators serve from the smaller sections like the school itself and all the way out to the community. It is amazing. I did not actually read the mission statement before applying to CSUSM, but it does nothing but solidify my happiness here, as well as promote my interest in becoming an educator myself.