On, Tuesday, April 4, the Writing Advisors program — one of our signature volunteer events — returned for the first time after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic. Volunteers from O’Melveny & Myers connected with students from Leaders High School to mentor and provide feedback on their science PBAT essays.PBATs, or Performance-Based Assessment Tasks, are in-depth analytical papers that students at Consortium schools research, write and revise before presenting their findings to a panel of judges. In 12th grade science, Leaders students spent the spring designing their own experiments based on personal interests and curiosities.
A total of 44 students and 22 volunteers met together over the course of two months to ensure that students were working toward criteria in the Consortium Experimental Science Rubric. They participated in April’s kick-off event, a virtual session, and worked together over email, building on the students’ professional communication and writing skills. 
On Monday, June 5, the Writing Advisors group met in person for a final celebration in preparation for the students’ June PBAT presentations.
Many thanks to Board Member Allen Burton and our coordinator Andrea Orr from O’Melveny who spearheaded this effort!