Empowering Students: Our Impact on Lawler Middle School Students

Neha Veeramani
Jun 28, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Sep 19, 2023

Hey there! Looking for a recap of PrePAIR’s impact on the lives of several middle school students? Then you’re in the right place!

Since December, PrePAIR Mentors was given the opportunity to help several students at Lawler Middle School prepare for their regional science fair! Our mentors showed up consistently every week to ensure that their mentees always had a person to help guide them throughout their science fair journey. From answering questions all the way to providing insightful feedback, our mentors were there every single step of the way to help their mentees feel confident and supported while developing their final project.

Mentoring is not simply about gaining new knowledge, it’s about empowering students to help reach their full potential. In pursuit of this goal, PrePAIR Mentors served as a catalyst for transformative change, helping students thrive in their scientific endeavors. Now let’s look at the core values of PrePAIR Mentors throughout the mentorship process.

1. Helping Students Develop a Strong Passion for Science

Here at PrePAIR Mentors, we believe that in order to succeed in a given field of education, a student must first be passionate about that field. Therefore, by consistently mentoring students, we helped incite curiosity and excitement towards the field of science. Beyond their project, students began to explore various aspects of science as a result of their excitement towards the subject. When students had trouble with finalizing their project idea, PrePAIR helped students think critically about their interests in science, and problems they would like to solve, resulting in students developing innovative project ideas.

2. Personalized Mentorship

Every student is unique, therefore, they all think differently, and have their own unique strengths and interests. Therefore, rather than providing all students with a monotonous form of mentorship, every mentor was given the freedom to develop their own feedback and mentoring process to cater their guidance towards the students’ needs.

3. Preparing Future-Ready Skills

To ensure students would be successful beyond science fair alone, we helped incorporate concepts that would help them strengthen their skills to be future-ready. By future-ready, we mean ensuring that students possess a wide-range of skills to help them be effective young professionals. Such skills include problem-solving, project management, and effective communication.

4. Helping Foster Relationships with Students

The most important value of mentorship here at PrePAIR Mentors is establishing relationships with our mentees. In order to cater guidance to their needs, mentors need to understand more about their students, beyond their science fair project. This is why our mentors also had general conversations with students, to learn more about their hobbies and interests, resulting in mentors effectively understanding their mentees, and students feeling comfortable going to their mentors for guidance and support beyond just science fair, but in their life journey as a whole.

Ultimately, our values of mentorship at PrePAIR Mentors have proven to be successful, how so you may wonder? Below are the achievements of our mentees within our first year!

Aadi Soni & Raghav Gowda: Beal Bank 1st Place (Advanced to Texas State Engineering and Science Fair)
Anushka Chattopadhyay: Beal Bank 3rd Place

We are so proud of all of our Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair competitors who have put in their time and effort to learn more about their chosen field of interest and look forward to working with them next year! Most importantly, we are grateful for all of our mentors who have spent hours of their week to help their mentees feel supported throughout their scientific endeavors!

Take a look at some of the amazing moments captured from this program!

Courtesy of Allison Qiu and Nishi Soni