Mia Wallace is a Junior at Lambert and is the swim team captain, serves as a Transit leader at North Point every Sunday, and interns at Brookwood Elementary four times a week. Her vivacious personality and her humble ambition is represented by her extensive involvement and leadership in extracurricular activities. 

Wallace found her teaching interest in her genes; her mom, grandma, and grandpa were all teachers and encouraged Mia to take on the teaching pathway. Along with the influence of her family, she had a teacher in eighth grade who she connected with and made her realize she could have an impact on the future generation. She was taking German virtually and the teacher enjoyed talking with and getting to know her students personally. 

“It wasn’t really like how other teachers give you the information and you get out of their class,” Wallace said. 

Now that Mia has the opportunity to intern as a fourth-grade teacher, she is thankful that she can get to know such diverse personalities and also learn from passionate, skilled teachers. 

“I kinda like that [getting to see kids do Science, Social Studies, and Specials] because I get to see my intern teacher and the different specials teachers because, especially in elementary school, they really have a passion to teach their specific niche and they’re really patient with the really little kids,” Wallace said.

Because she took the option to teach for a full year rather than just a semester, she gets to form strong bonds with her students. She talked about her playful relationships with her students and how they started asking her to bring workout clothes so that she can participate in their six-minute warmup and football. Through the relationships with her students, she has learned a lot of patience and methods on how to simplify topics to make them more digestible for young minds. 

“I honestly love my kids.” Wallace continued, “I didn’t think I could make a connection with fourth graders as a sixteen-year-old this fast.”

Mia’s passion for teaching and serving the younger generations has manifested itself beyond teaching and into her role as a Transit leader at North Point Church. After a mediocre experience with Transit when she was in middle school, she hoped to create a better experience for her own Transit group. 

“My Transit experience wasn’t bad, but I wished that it could have been improved upon,” Wallace said. “I just wanted to give back to girls that might have been like me in middle school and make a difference.”

As a leader of a church group, Mia and her co-leaders get to see their group of girls go through transforming experiences and also get to know them more through these experiences. One of her favorite things about her involvement is that she gets to know her girls and gets weekly updates on their lives. Her girls come to her with a lot of probing church-related questions and she loves to see how their inquisitiveness can grow their relationship with God.

“I like to see how their curiosity has fostered throughout what they’re going through and how the girls can answer questions for each other while I and my co-leaders can sit back and see them answer their own questions,” Wallace said.

Beyond her involvement with Transit and interning at Brookwood, Mia is probably most known at school for her accomplishments on Lambert’s Swim and Dive team. She has been swimming competitively since she was eight and hopes to continue her career and move on swimming for a D1 college. 

“I always say this, but I was playing softball, ice skating and swimming at the same time, and I would go from swim practice to ice skating and my hair would freeze, so my mom was like, ‘you have to pick one,’” Wallace said. 

Mia has been swimming for Lambert since her freshman year and has been a team captain since her sophomore year. In the midst of COVID with empty stands and a lack of team morale, Mia and her friend, Ally Zaleski, were tasked with bridging the gap on the team between school swimmers and club swimmers, who mostly only attended the swim meets. As spirit captains, they were in charge of team bonding activities, encouraging swimmers to cheer for each other, and making sure that everyone on the team had a voice.

As a part of her goal to gain more hype for the swim team, Mia has taken it upon herself to manage Lambert’s Swim and Dive Instagram and has seen a 220% increase since she started the account with zero followers. In order to gain more followers and involvement, Mia and other team captains have been doing “Instagram takeovers” on the days leading up to intrasquad meets where followers can ask questions and see what their day is like.

“For us to be state champions, and there are only five people in the stands; it’s not very motivating,” Wallace said. “I really wanna get more hype for the swim team.”

Their chances of winning county and possibly state championships this year are looking good as they still have strong senior swimmers. 

Wallace exemplifies a compassionate and motivated Lambert student. We are so excited to see another human of Lambert have an impact on the world.