TAMPA - Here's one way to impress the seventh-grade set: Stand on your head and do a backflip in a classroom where students spend most of their time on punctuation and sentence structure.
If that doesn't work, show them how you fake a punch to the face and make it look real on the big screen.
That's what stuntman Nick Stanner did Wednesday inside a language arts classroom at Davidsen Middle School as part of the Great American Teach-In.
"All the stuff you see on TV where they say, "Don't try this at home.' I'm the idiot that's trying it," said the 27-year-old Stanner, who works for the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando. "It's great fun."
The annual Teach-In brought thousands of volunteers into Tampa Bay area classrooms, where they talked about their jobs, hobbies and interests.
There was some of the usual: doctors, lawyers, police officers and nurses. And the unusual: squid dissections, snow cone makers and parachutists.
In Hillsborough, more than 8,000 volunteers spent time in all grades, from elementary schools to high schools. There was a screenplay writer at Alonso High School, an acupuncturist at Brandon High, a saxophonist at Cahoon Elementary and a helicopter pilot at Lomax Elementary.
Davidsen Middle student and lawyer wannabe Kristen Diaz, 12, admitted her interest in the event wasn't entirely educational.
"It's nice because we get to miss school time," she said.
Added her classmate, Danyella Gieder, who dreams of being an actor: "We don't have to do anything but listen."
One of the goals of the Teach-In is to expose children to professions they may one day want to join.
"How do you know what you want to be when you grow up when you don't know what there is to be," asked Donna Houchen, executive director of SERVE, Hillsborough's volunteer organization and a Teach-In sponsor.
Houchen said the event benefits more than just children. It also helps the adults, companies and employees who participate by getting them involved in education.
"Many of them haven't been back since they graduated," Houchen said. "They let the children know education is important, (that) their dreams are important."
In Pinellas schools, students were introduced to gourmet cooking, archery, doughnut making, ferret care, forensics and grand prix race car driving.
Winn Schwartau, a national expert on computer security, grilled Seminole Middle School students on the ethics of online surfing.
Marine Lance Cpl. John Murray, 20, visited the class of his former geography teacher, Dave Baylor, at Oak Grove Middle School.
He told sixth-graders about boot camp, how a rocket-propelled grenade whizzed across the hood of his truck as he fought through southern Iraq, and how his was the unit that tore down Saddam Hussein's statue. Murray's job that day: crowd control.
Would he go to war again, one student asked?
"I wouldn't want to, but if I had to go, I would. No one should ever want to go to war. It's not a fun thing."
At Davidsen Middle, Stanner gave students a full picture of his stuntman job, including financially lean times and constant rejections.
He appeared in the street racing movie 2 Fast 2 Furious. "You don't get to see me, but you can see the back of my head," he said.
Stanner explained how he practiced gymnastics for 21 years and always dreamed of going to the Olympics. He said he was even on the 2000 hopeful team. But as a student at the University of Nebraska, a stress fracture to his spine ended his gymnastics career.
He came to Florida seeking stunt work. He was a bartender at Universal Studios before he joined MGM.
Stanner stood in the middle of the classroom, did a backflip into the air and left the children with some of his stuntman wisdom.
"I'm very big on following your dreams, following your heart," he said. "If you follow your dreams and do what's in your heart, you're going to be happy. I'm living proof of it."
