Students today must balance curriculum and extracurricular activities while navigating different teaching styles per subject. But what if teachers could uplift students, specifically when it comes to building something new?
One student had no coding experience until she had the opportunity. Once she was empowered, something shifted. Three months later, she stood before a school learning committee, presenting a mobile app she and a team of three peers had built for 60 adult staff members. Their app addressed attendance recording challenges faced by their school community. When asked how they developed their idea, she answered simply, “We interviewed our users.”
That moment did not come from a textbook. It happened because a teacher decided to become a mentor.
I am a lead engineering teacher at Trinity Hall, an all-girls high school focused on STEM in Tinton Falls, N.J. I am also a fourth-generation graduate of an all-girls school. My engineering background and years in the classroom have given me a clear view of how much ground young women still have to cover in STEM. This year, to grow the STEM ecosystem, I became a first-year chapter lead and mentor for Technovation, a global program that guides girls through building a technology solution to solve a real community problem.
What mentoring actually involves
As educators, there is one thing we always need but never have enough of: Time. And when it comes to mentoring a student team, that takes real time. During the active program season, I spend roughly two to four hours per week with my teams. Some weeks are heavier, especially when a deadline approaches or a team hits a wall, but it’s always time well spent.
What mentoring does not require is a computer science degree. Programs like Technovation build their curriculum to support mentors as much as students. The materials guide teams through market research, app design, basic coding, and pitch preparation. What you bring is the ability to ask good questions, hold a team accountable, and remind high school juniors that frustration is part of the process, not a reason to quit.
What you get out of it
Mentoring is not a one-way investment. Working alongside students on live, open-ended projects has made me a sharper project-based learning teacher. My understanding of AI tools and digital workflows has deepened because I am learning alongside my students in real time, not from a training slide deck.
There is also the professional network. Through Technovation, I have connected with educators, engineers and innovators I would never have met through the school day alone, not to mention the less quantifiable but most impactful reward of watching students become something more than they were when they walked in. Mentoring gives you a front-row seat to that growth.
Why it matters for students
Recent studies find that high-quality mentoring relationships significantly increase students’ self-efficacy, identity and long-term persistence in STEM fields. This presence can meaningfully increase a young person’s likelihood of staying on a STEM pathway, but the data only tells part of the story.
In Technovation, students choose to be there. They are solving problems they identified themselves. This year, my three teams are building apps designed to serve their own school community, one to improve attendance tracking, one to reduce crowding in student support classrooms, and one to help students discover and join school clubs. These are real products for real users, and the girls building them know it.
When my students learned that their work would be reviewed by judges worldwide, something shifted. They started carrying themselves like professionals because someone was finally treating them like professionals. Technovation connects students to a global stage where their work does not disappear into a folder at the end of the semester. It gets seen.
Ready to get started?
If you are wondering whether you are technical enough, experienced enough, or simply have enough bandwidth, I understand those hesitations. I had them too. What moved me past them was a simple question. Who else is going to do this for these girls?
Students in innovation programs do not need a mentor with all the answers. They need someone who knows their school and students, and shows up on a Thursday afternoon when the team is stuck and starting to lose faith in their idea. That person is not a visiting engineer or a corporate sponsor. That person is you.
Technovation is a strong entry point, particularly if your school has girls ages 8 to 18 who are curious about technology. Right now, my three Technovation teams are in the thick of it. The apps are being built, the presentations are taking shape, and the anticipation in our room is the kind of energy no lesson plan can manufacture. These girls are waiting to hear how their work lands on a global stage, and the excitement is contagious. As their mentor, I am not just watching them use their design thinking to compete. I am growing right alongside them.
Programs like Technovation give students a reason to care deeply about something they built with their own hands and minds. It connects them to a worldwide community of innovators who look like them and dream like them. It shows them that the problems in their own hallways are worth solving, and that they are exactly the right people to solve them. As for mentors, you have more to offer your students than the school day allows you to give. A mentorship role in an extracurricular innovation program is one of the most meaningful ways to give it. Find your program. Sign up. Show up. Your students are already waiting for you.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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