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An I am Potential student learns how to make a dental impression.

They shuffled into the Dentistry Building with their hoodies, their backpacks, and – of course – their cellphones. Fourteen teenagers from Oxford Street and Highland Park Junior High Schools stood around in the foyer awkwardly, many of them texting, waiting for something to happen.

That something was an “I Am Potential” session, held in the Faculty of Dentistry on March 3, 2015 under the guidance of third-year dentistry students and led by Abby Barton.

I Am Potential is an after-school mentoring program that connects inner-city junior high youth with university student volunteers each week on campus for recreation, a meal, and fun hands-on learning projects in engineering, theatre, and medicine. The Navigators of Halifax started I am Potential in 2013 with the aim of giving youth positive adult role models and encouraging them to think about pursuing post-secondary education. This is the first year that dentistry has been involved in the program.

Dal students are "inspiring" to junior high youth

Kevin Jolly, the founder and director of I am Potential and the city leader for the Navigators in Halifax, says that junior high is a “critical time for young people”.  He believes that it is important for them to have opportunities to be mentored and have experiences that make them think about college and university. “To spend time at Dal with different groups of students is inspiring for them,” he says.

And it’s true. Once the kids get to the pre-clinical labs and start to work on making alginate impressions of a model dental arch, they are focused and the cellphones are nowhere to be seen.

Jolly says that the feedback from the youth after the event was amazing. “They wanted to know why they couldn’t go back again the next week.”

For the dentistry students, too, it was an eye-opening experience. “The way kids approach a topic is exemplary,” says Nishant Goswami, a third-year Qualifying Program student. “They have much to teach us as well.”

Mo Atwi, another third-year student, says that his student “asked some great questions, like what should the temperature of the water be.” This experience was echoed by DDS3 student Schona Grimes, whose student was keen to know “what we are doing and why we are doing it”.

Alexandra Taylor, Sarah MacDonald, and Zeina Asyyed, second-year medical students, were also on hand for the activity and the tour of the Dentistry Building. They have been connecting with the I am Potential youth for 10 weeks.

Before they all head off to the Tupper Building to have a meal (generously donated by the Foggle Goggle), Jolly says that he is impressed by how engaged the pupils were in the activity and hopes the dentistry experience can be repeated.