Facilitating Collaboration, Igniting Passion
Profile of MESA Advisor Alejandro Carrero-Ramos
Alejandro Carrero-Ramos has been a teacher at South Meadows Middle School for six years, and a MESA advisor for a year-and-a-half. One of his greatest joys as an advisor is fostering the relationships between students so they can learn to collaborate.
Students are sometimes shy when they first come to MESA and prefer to work on their own. They don’t yet feel comfortable sharing their ideas. Alejandro sees this as an opportunity and encourages, “get to know you” type of games.
The support and resources from MESA help Alejandro provide students with a welcoming space to experience unique engineering, science and mathematics projects – something that they may not have been able to participate in otherwise.
Alejandro’s guidance helps students become more open to working in teams, which develops their critical thinking skills. The dynamic helps students come alive after joining MESA. The result: barriers are broken down and students find they have more similarities than differences.
“They’re excited to talk about their passion, whether it’s engineering, science, or something else. Students who typically don’t speak up in school, light up when they get to talk about their MESA project.”
Alejandro, reflecting on a student who recently joined MESA, says, “I had a student who told me that he wasn’t interested in anything, but when he attended MESA, all that changed. He participated in group projects and was really engaged in engineering challenges. MESA provided the spark to ignite his fire and his passion.”