Job Shadow Day with Cupertino's Monta Vista High Students

The graffiti on the mayor’s office wall was the thanks he got for giving three Monta Vista High School girls each a baseball cap that read "I (love) Cupertino".

Graffiti was their word for what they did, and it would only be fair to note what they wrote was on his white board and was sweet.

“Cupertino Loves Orrin Mahoney.”

The girls joined me for job shadow day on March 18 and we joined other Monta Vista students who were shadowing Pete Coglianese, media coordinator for the City of Cupertino. Coglianese and I coordinated our students so that the students who were with me would interview Mayor Orrin Mahoney in a taped session with the cameras and other equipment operated by Coglianese’s job shadow students.

The results of the interview are attached to this article. For everybody’s first time performing their new “jobs”, we agreed the students did splendidly.

Mahoney was gracious to give up time in his day to partner with all of us, and made quite an impression on the students.

Adithi Saiapuram was first to ask if she could get a picture of herself with Mahoney, and the others—Karen Shih and Yashashree Pisolkar—jumped on the idea.

The girls and I sat down before the interview and worked out a handful of questions to ask and developed the order in which they should be presented.

After the interview Mahoney invited us to his office where his desk became a stage at which to pose for scrapbook material.

It was on a whim that Yashashree bounced up asking Mahoney if she could write on his white board. And that’s when the graffiti started. It didn’t take long before Adithi and Karen were with marker in hand adding to Yashashree’s handiwork.

Next Coglianese gave us a tour of where all the magic happens when he and his team live stream and record such events as city council meetings, Cupertino Rotary meetings and a host of other events.

The team is award-winning in its field competing against much larger cities such as Seattle and San Francisco. In 2007 it brought home a first place in the category of public and community meetings along with an honorable mention for public affairs programming at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) Government Programming Awards. In 2008 the City won second and third place in the same categories. 

Then the girls and I were off to Bitter+Sweet to meet with owner Janice Chua. I wanted the students to understand the importance of relationship building within the community, and how I came to know Chua—it was an interview about her coffee shop opening in mid-2011. Lunch there was excellent, as always, and the students fell in love with the place, all vowing they would be back.

Work for me that day wasn’t typical, but it sure was fun.

[My personal thanks to Adithi Saiapuram, Karen Shih, Yashashree Pisolkar, Mayor Orrin Mahoney, Pete Coglianese, Robert Kim, Janice Chua, and Karen Iwamoto for making the day happen.]