Khan Stories: Jason Spyres

Um, my name is 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. K-99397 because 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.

I was never really the type that was real good at school. Like, I was smart, but I wouldn't sit around; I 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.

Fortunately, when I got arrested, it helped my mother get clean and sober and helped my father get clean and sober. So, I now had parents that were actively involved in trying to do good things for me. I decided that I wanted to improve my education. 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. She'd send me the transcripts, and I'd read over them.

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.

When I got towards the end of my sentence, I was able to enter 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. I used the Khan Academy SAT prep and, fortunately, I was accepted as a transfer student to Stanford University. Little did I know that a year later I would go to my classroom and Mr. Khan be our guest speaker.

I got to tell him something that was very difficult to say but were the truest words I could think of, and that was thank you. Um, and it's not just who he is because, 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. So, if you're a part of that organization, if you're a donor, if you're Mr. 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 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. I can only tell you that there are 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 is a part of.