About Me

My name is Ryan Leighton. I was born in San Diego and shortly after my parents traveled to distant lands; first they lived in Vista, then Carlsbad, and when I was four they moved to Oceanside. I have lived in Oceanside, on the west side of I-5 every year since, with the exception of two I spent on-campus at UCSD. I went through the exceptional public schools that Oceanside Unified provided and graduated from Oceanside High School in 1999. After high school, I attended UCSD in La Jolla and received my B.S. in Structural Engineering in 2003. I worked for the City of San Diego as an engineer for a couple of years and then followed a love for aviation and became a corporate pilot. I always enjoyed school and I felt that I was very successful from kindergarten through graduating high school. It wasn't until college that I realized I had only been successful on a local level, but the school district had done me a disservice, and had not adequately prepared me relative to the students in my college courses. My view of education and the need to provide every student the same opportunities was shaped from my experience.

I enjoy technology and I especially enjoy technology when it works the way I expect it to work. I love apple products and enjoy my iMac for photo editing and my iPhone for everything else I would ever need to do. For the most part, I believe technology is integrated  in the correct ways, in that it makes things easier or more efficient. However, I have also seen where technology, from iPhone apps to aircraft avionics, attempt to replace and over complicate simple tasks already accomplished by humans. It is exciting though to see technology being adopted into the classroom. I gave a talk on aviation in my brother's high school classroom and it was amazing to stand at the front of the room and pull up a picture of the airplane I fly, through Google, on the Smartboard.

While I would like to say it was, my decision to apply to the CSUSM credential program was not based on the College's Mission Statement. I do, however, feel good in the fact that the college is focused on diversity, educational equity, and social justice. They build on values that were taught to me by my parents. As a father, it makes me proud to be a part of the program, knowing that any teacher that comes through the program possesses values that I would want for my own daughters.