Career events at elementary schools provide a valuable tool for young children to learn about the different jobs they can pursue later in life. Often, though, the speakers tend to represent jobs children are already aware of such as doctor, lawyer, accountant and fireman. ”This year’s Career Week at Marquez Charter Elementary was different, allowing students to get up close and personal with representatives of other types of professions, including a dairy worker, a paleontologist, a movie stuntman, and a pair of movie writer/producers. ”The event’s non-human superstar was Clarabell, a 1,600-pound dairy cow who came as a representative of the Dairy Council of California. The instructor, Efrain Valenzuela, wowed the students with a milking demonstration, and taught useful tidbits about a cow ‘s body and explained to the students where their breakfast milk and yogurt comes from. ”’Our objective is to teach the kids what happens from cow to container,’ Valenzuela told the Palisadian-Post. The students learned about the eating habits of the cows, and were impressed to learn that a single cow can produce 10 to 15 gallon of milk per day. ”Another hit with the students was Mario Perez, a professional stuntman who has worked in video games such as ‘Devil May Cry’ and ‘Matrix: Online’ and films like ‘Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World.’ He did many of the sword-fighting stunts in the film, and estimates that he was killed ‘about seven or eight times.’ ”Perez brought up several students and involved them in fake fights in which the student would mimic punching or kicking and he would perform various flips, jumps and rolls. He then did several demonstrations with swords from the same batch made for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ ”Doug Goodrow, a bone preparator from the Natural History Museum, talked about a dig he had been working on in Montana where they uncovered a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton that was about 70 percent intact. He showed slides of the dig site and explained how dinosaur fossils are found and excavated. He also displayed a map showing the distribution of the fossils at the site, along with a plaster cast and model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth. ”Palisadians Keith and Juliet Giglio, a husband-and-wife team, gave a presentation about writing movies and what it’s like to be on a set. The Giglios wrote and produced the Disney film ‘A Cinderella Story’ and were contributing writers for the animated film ‘Tarzan.’ They explained what it was like seeing their scripts get fleshed out on film, and encouraged the students to pursue a career in writing. ”Writing movies ‘is all all about imagination,’ said Keith Giglio. ‘I get to be a kid every day.’ ”Career Week was coordinated by Rosario Sindel, a parent at Marquez and an attorney with Unocal. Among her other speakers were Palisadians and school parents John Salwitz, a video game designer who founded Electronic Arts; Denise Moss, a writer/producer for ‘All Grown Up’ on Nickelodeon; and professional musician Charlie Bisharet, who appears regularly on ‘American Idol.’ He played his electric violin for the students.
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