Youngsters Get Lessons on Their Dream Fields

Mary Shambra, principal of San Jose Street School in Mission Hills, believes you’re never too young to dream about what you will do when you grow up. So the 55-year-old educator has added future careers to the curriculum at the San Fernando Valley elementary school.

This school year, fifth-graders have met chefs, a cancer researcher and theater professionals. And more than 40 youngsters have visited the California Design College, a technical school in Koreatown that teaches computer-assisted design for jobs in fashion and related fields.

To secure a place on the bus for the field trip, the children wrote essays explaining why they wanted to visit the design college. The majority of Shambra’s students are Latino, and many have family in the garment industry, she said. In his essay, 11-year-old Diego Ortiz wrote that his father has been in the clothing business for years -- most recently in quality control.

“His father’s dream has always been to own his own clothing company with more than one label -- that’s how aware our students are,” Shambra said.

At the fashion college, the fifth-graders were shown how computers are used in the design and production of clothes, and how fabric colors and patterns can be changed at the push of a button. For the principal, the visit was a welcome opportunity to show her computer-savvy students how their skills could eventually translate into jobs.

“It makes no sense to teach youngsters to use computers in the classroom and not make the connection to the use of technology in the workplace,” she said.

Shambra believes elementary school youngsters need to know more about the world of work than what they learn from parents talking about their jobs at typical career-day programs. Convinced that high school is too late to start thinking about careers, Shambra instituted the program last fall. She chose fifth-graders -- her oldest students -- “because they have the maturity, and they’re thinking about their futures.”

At their “culmination ceremony” this month, marking their passage to middle school, they put together a program about possible careers in architecture, politics, engineering and education, among other fields. Journalism was added to the list after a reporter from La Opinion interviewed the students.

The youngsters recently went to the Mark Taper Forum to see the new play “Chavez Ravine” and meet director Lisa Peterson and several others involved in the production.

“Chavez Ravine” covers 35 years in the history of the area around Dodger Stadium and features such real-life figures as architect Richard Neutra and former Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.

“I would hope that a play like ‘Chavez Ravine’ would make a child think, ‘Hmm, architect, urban planner, historian, writer, political activist’ -- that the play itself might suggest fields of study and things that they might do,” Peterson said.

At the theater, the fifth-graders also met John Glore, who practices a profession that few had heard of before. Glore is a dramaturge, who worked with the writers and director to shape the play for performance.

Shambra said she felt comfortable exposing her students to jobs in the garment industry, despite the reputation of some employers for exploiting immigrant labor. The design school, she said, represents the industry at its most forward-looking.

“Many of our students have families that have used the garment industry as a steppingstone when they came to this country,” Shambra said. That family involvement piques the interest of the children at the outset, and the field trip shows them “real careers in real fashion. I wouldn’t take them to something that was dead end. We need to redefine our thinking -- what might not be a high-end career in the past may be in the future,” Shambra said.

The design school’s founder, Sabrina Kay, greeted the students. A former child model, Kay explained that she came to the United States from Korea when she was 19 years old and spoke no English.

In California, Kay -- who took the name Sabrina from Audrey Hepburn’s couture-conscious title character in the 1954 -- movie worked in her parents’ clothing business, La Paloma Fashions.

When Kay first saw computer technology applied to clothing design and manufacture, she saw its potential for revolutionizing the industry.

She decided she wanted to train the people who would lead the industry in the electronic age and started her school, out of her bedroom, in 1991. The college started with six students and now has 500.

As a successful immigrant woman and entrepreneur, Kay is a fine role model, Shambra said. And Kay said she feels a real kinship with the young visitors and told them: “You can really be whatever you want to be. Have faith. I know every adult tells you that. But, this moment, believe it.”

But it was the hands-on part of the trip the fifth-graders liked the most. Working alongside design students, they draped and pinned fabric over dress forms. With the help of instructor Kate Le Sage, they devised their own color palettes for fashion illustrations.

And each young visitor was given two denim pockets to decorate. They used pink cotton balls, glitter and iron-on decorations that looked like tattoos.

One boy wrote his name in glitter and gave the sparkling pocket to his mother.

“We’re not suggesting that students take a vocational course as an alternative to a higher education,” Shambra said. “Everybody should have a higher education, that’s a given.”

After the trip, none of the children declared that they wanted to be the next Donna Karan or Michael Kors.

Ten-year-old Bianca Rez, whose father had a clothing business in his native Hungary, said she wanted to be a model, but that the visit to the design college made her realize she could model her own designs.

Ten-year-old Juan Camberos is thinking in terms of serial professions. Fashion doesn’t grab him, but he’s a talented pitcher and hopes to play professional baseball. And, he said, “I want to retire at 32 and then become an astronaut.”