- My name's Jason Spires.
It's nice to be able to use that name because,
for many years, the only name that mattered
in my life was Mr. K99397 'cause that was my prison number.
Unfortunately, at a very young age,
I made a stupid decision to sell cannabis,
and I ended up in prison,
and I was never really the type
that was real good at school.
Like, I was smart,
but I wouldn't sit around and wouldn't focus.
Not trying to make excuses,
but my parents had drug addictions.
I probably didn't have the best guidance,
but I still knowingly made my own choices.
So I own up to that, but when I got to prison,
I had moments in my life that made me realize
I had a distorted notion of what success really was,
and fortunately, when I got arrested,
it helped my mother get clean and sober,
and it helped my father get clean and sober.
So I now had parents that were actively involved
in trying to do good things for me,
and I decided that I wanted to improve my education,
and one of the things that I remember is
my mother went online to Khan Academy,
and she would get printed out transcripts
of what the videos were talking about in math,
and she'd send me the transcripts, and I'd read over 'em,
and from that, I started realizing I understand
how fractions work.
I understand math on a deeper level.
I was always good with it,
but now I was getting to the point
where I could actually perform well with it.
While I was in prison,
I was able to, with Khan Academy's transcripts,
learn how to do many of the math procedures
that helped me perform better on the SAT,
and when I got towards the end of my sentence,
I was able to get to a work-release program,
which allowed me to go to community college,
and I had to take the SAT
in anticipation of transferring to a university,
and I used the Khan Academy SAT prep,
and fortunately, I was accepted as a transfer student
at Stanford University,
and little did I know that a year later I would go
to my classroom, and Mr. Khan would be our guest speaker,
and I got to tell him something
that was very difficult to say
but was the truest words I could think of,
and that was thank you,
and it's not just who he is 'cause, like he said,
he did nothing personally for me.
It was his organization.
It was having videos that were easy to understand.
It was being able to learn knowledge without having to admit
that I'm stupid because I didn't already know it.
It took away the embarrassment factor
of having to ask someone else,
and so if you're a part of that organization,
if you're a donor, if you're Miss Door who gave Mr. Khan
the impetus he needed to make this actually happen,
thank you because you played a role
in me now being a Stanford University student
and studying computer science after being locked up 15 years
without access to technology.
So I appreciate everything that's been done
for me in my life,
and there's been so many people that's contributed to it,
but I can honestly say that Khan Academy
and everyone involved with the organization
and everyone who has supported its expansion and growth
to other students has made an impact upon me,
and I can only tell you that there's so many other people
that have the potential to make my story nothing
if they can just get their hands
on the ability to learn the way that I was able to,
which Khan Academy was a part of.