View the Photo Gallery of Reed's Career Day

(Check out the photo gallery of more than 50 photos, most taken by students Liva Alluin'12 and Natasja Alluin'12. If you have more to add, please do, it's easy!)

 had a nurse, a costumer, a landscaper, a pilot and many others to explain what they do and encourage students into various kinds of careers and college. There was also a lizard, bird, dog and squirrel, too!

Budding writer Natasja Alluin reports: 

November 16, 2011 was the 8th grade Career Day at Walter Reed Middle School, and it turned out great. There were a bunch of different varieties of jobs from LAPD to Nurses to artist and even actresses.  Wow. This was a very fun and and learning experience for all the eight graders.  Most people don't even know how stressful setting Career Day up is. The person that everyone should thank for make this day possible is our eighth grade counselor, Ms. Clement. She says that with the help of the other Reed staff and counselors, and the wonderful PTSA parents, she was able to make this day as successful as possible.

Also, Studio City Patch was honored to attend the Career Day for the second year in a row (and in the past as a film critic).

In one class, Nick Jennings, an animator who worked for seven years on SpongeBob SquarePants and now on Adventure Time impressed the students and brought his portfolio. He talked about working in oils and acrylics and also the new computer-generated animation.

Rev. Bill Williams talked about traveling throughout the world meeting people. "I love meeting people and talking to people," he said, detailing a trip to North Ireland he went on. He is part of the International Church of the Four Square Gospel which has 50,000 churches in 150 countries around the world. He urged everyone "Stay in school" and asked the class to repeat it.

Shayna Schlotfelt impressed the students talking about working on a website for musicians at Warner Bros. and meeting people like Josh Groban, Michael Buble, , Alanais Morissette and others. The daughter of English teacher and Yearbook adviser Wendy Mintz, she said "I don't play an instrument, but good at the computer."

Los Angeles Police Detective Kimberly Jones-Harris said she came to the campus once to take an incident report, and has been coming back for Career Day ever since. "This is a good group of very interested kids," she said. "They don't all ask me if they could hold my gun."

However, LA School motorcycle patrol officers Manny Muneton and Shane Stewart said they did have a lot of students want to try their motorcycles.

"It would get a bit chaotic if we let them all try it," Muneton said.

"But they were good about asking questions and seemed interested," Stewart added. 

Dr. Tracey Sylvester, who has delivered thousands of babies in the past 15 years and works for Kaiser, was asked if she ever delivered conjoined twins. "Those are very rare, so no, I haven't," said the doctor, who went on to explain about some dangerous deliveries. A mother of twins herself, she said, "I have helped deliver four at a time!"

Family court Judge Michael Convey from the Van Nuys Division was there, as well as design animator Ernie Merlan, actress Susan Martin, composer Jim DiPasquale and many others.