At this year’s summer Paralympics in Paris, earned a silver medal in the F64 shot put. She also competed in the F64 discus event and came in 10th place. F64 is a for Paralympians with limb deficiencies and leg length differences.

“With able-bodied kids, they can use their body differently,” Middleton, a sophomore at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, California, The Daily Bulletin in an interview last year. “They have both of their legs. They can do certain things a lot stronger. But it doesn’t matter because I can still compete with them.” 

Middleton is one of three inspiring high school Paralympians on Team USA who are competing in Paris this year. Here are their stories:

ARELLE MIDDLETON, 16

Middleton was with a congenital femoral deficiency, which means her left leg is shorter than her right leg and her left hip is underdeveloped. Despite physical challenges, she competes alongside athletes without disabilities in track and field high school meets.

In 2023, when Middleton was just 15 years old, she was named U.S. Paralympics Track & Field High School Female Field Athlete of the Year, and also a spot on the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field High School All-American list.

Her mother, former WNBA player Sandra Van Embricqs, encouraged Middleton to get involved in sports at an early age.

Middleton joined the Challenged Athletes Foundation, or CAF, at age 12 and frequently won competitions. But when she entered high school, her mother strongly encouraged her to join the Los Osos track and field team.

“I didn’t know how I would feel being with able-bodied kids,” Middleton told The Daily Bulletin. “They wouldn’t really understand as much as kids with a disability would understand, but I met some great people here. It’s good to be part of something with your school.”

The Paralympian plans to compete in both wheelchair basketball and track and field after she graduates in 2026. She believes cross-training will benefit her performance in each sport.

Several college basketball programs have already Middleton.

JORDAN WHITE, 15

At 15 years old, Jordan White is the youngest archer from the U.S. to for the Paralympics this summer. 

A sophomore at Hill Country Christian School of Austin, White’s math teacher Christopher Felleisen calls him a “phenomenal student.”

He’s also a quick learner. The Austin, Texas, native tried archery for the first time less than four years ago when he was looking for a new activity to keep him busy during COVID. He has since won six national records. And less than a year ago, he began working toward competing in Paris.

White was with a right leg that is shorter than the left, challenging his flexibility. He dedicates six to seven days a week to perfecting his form, strength, and mental agility and understands the role he plays in enhancing the representation of people with disabilities in archery. 

“I really hope that I can pave the way for other young disabled archers,” he Hill Country News in August.

“Jordan is a hard worker, asks great questions and is an extremely high achiever,” Felleisen told The 74. “What’s exciting about having Jordan in class is that he’s dedicated to doing well and it’s seen in his athletic performance, but his level of achievement is not very different in the classroom.”

White, who is part of a close-knit group of friends known as the ‘Lunch Bunch,’ takes part in his  high school’s engineering pathway program, which focuses on engineering and robotics classes. He’s also a member of the National Junior Honor Society and the yearbook staff. 

“He’s known for being incredibly intelligent and he’s at the top of all his classes, and everyone knows it,” added his academic and college advisor Jessica Pyo.

His teachers say they’re closely following his performance at the Paralympics.

“It looks like he’s having a lot of fun and this is a great story for him to tell, especially with college applications coming soon.” Pyo said.

MAYLEE PHELPS, 17

At just 17, Maylee Phelps has taken wheelchair tennis by storm and has secured a win in the first round of women’s singles in Paris. 

Phelps, a high school junior in Portland, Oregon, was with spina bifida, a condition where the spinal cord does not develop properly. This requires her to wear a leg brace and use a wheelchair.

The Paralympian began competing nationally at age 12, the International Tennis Federation’s Wheelchair Tennis Junior of the Year in 2023 and she scored the No. 1 position on the Cruyff Foundation Girls’ Junior Ranking. 

Phelps her homeschool schedule with at least five days a week of tennis practice and strength training. 

“She just absorbs,” U.S. national wheelchair tennis coach John Devorss the University of Oregon. “You tell her something and it just takes a few times and she’s correcting it herself, which is a great characteristic of any athlete is just be really coachable.”

Phelps and Devorss train in Salem, Oregon, which is more than an hour south of Phelps’ home in Portland. 

In her free time, the tennis player enjoys puzzles and playing with her dog Otis. She also volunteers at Shriners Hospital for Children, introducing children with disabilities to tennis.

Many parents have long seen youth sports as a conduit through which kids can learn and develop these key teamwork, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. But COVID’s disruptions exacerbated long-term trends showing some declining interest in youth athletics. A year into the pandemic, with kids in youth athletics said their child was no longer interested in playing sports and found a 32 percent attrition rate among student athletes in grades 8-12, with higher rates among those who are underserved and under-represented.

A new alternative, however, is rapidly emerging and offers students both hands-on experiences and opportunities to hone broader critical thinking skills: Robotics. Any parent who wants their child to have a clearer roadmap for an uncertain future should understand that youth robotics is the extracurricular that allows all participants to “go pro” and find pathways to career success. It gives students the best of both worlds — teamwork-derived skills and STEM competency development — while combatting a trend that has accelerated during the pandemic: the loss of in-person social connection and hands-on skills development.

When parents select extracurriculars for their students, they are, in part, looking for opportunities to teach the values required for responsible citizenship. They want their students to learn how to prevent and navigate conflict, encourage balanced participation and inclusion, develop social competencies, build bridges among peoples and challenge assumptions and stereotypes. At the same time, American companies and governmental organizations are hungry for STEM-capable talent as the global business landscape continues to shift. Despite the continued growth of U.S. science and engineering enterprises, the country’s share of global research and development has since 2000 due in part to factors such as increased overseas competition.

This is where robotics shines, as these accessible programs teach not only academic concepts but many valuable social skills and competencies students will need to contribute to something larger than themselves. Robotics actively encourages students to produce high-quality work while giving them space to “fail” safely, recognize the value of others and respect both individuals and community. Like most sports, robotics relies almost entirely on collaboration and recognizes that each team member brings individual strengths that, when combined, buoy performance and learning outputs for everyone.

Engaging students in active, hands-on learning — and giving them increasing levels of responsibility over their education – is critical to their development into values-driven adults. Mistakes are allowed and even encouraged in robotics, which provides a space for positive learning where failure does not equal defeat.

Robotics blends group-based activities with open-ended creativity: these programs often assign student teams a challenge which requires the construction and operation of a robot to complete it. The most effective programs outline the rules and basic requirements but allow great flexibility in design, fabrication, coding or other factors. Students will encounter lack of instruction and structure throughout their personal and professional lives, just as they will be asked to collaborate with peers, whether they are friends or new acquaintances, are from different backgrounds or possess varying levels of experience. Early exposure to this type of uninhibited team-based problem-solving allows them to learn from one another, believe in their ideas and recognize their own potential. These are all critical skills that students will need in future STEM careers, where being a well-rounded person is arguably as valuable as technical skill acquisition.

For teachers looking to incorporate relevant concepts into the classroom, robotics-based curricula should align with existing educational standards (Common Core, ISTE, CSTA, NGSS, CASEL SEL, etc.) but can be taught in untraditional ways. Robotics and lessons about its uses need not be reserved for engineering or coding classes – they can be integrated into existing courses such as career and technical (CTE) training pathways, beyond traditional science and math. With the right context, educators can help students understand robotics’ role in everything from automotive manufacturing and surgery to agriculture and shipping.

Educators can help students realize their own ability to solve problems in these areas by using current events and global challenges to inspire students to think creatively about STEM and discover its real-world uses, even theoretically. Teachers can assign their class a focus area – for example, recycling, animal health or water cycles – and ask them to brainstorm solutions to any problem under this umbrella. When elementary and middle school students competing in FIRST LEGO League were asked to think about transportation this past school year, they from an autonomous vaccine delivery drone to devices that sense fires in shipping containers.

Teachers do not need to look beyond their own communities for opportunities to inspire students to use their STEM skills for others’ benefit. Be it so a teacher’s husband can walk their newborn or in the pandemic’s early days, robotics students understand they do not need to wait for their future careers to make a difference: they are already solving real-world problems and proactively seeking ways to make a difference through education.

When it comes to instruction, teaching robotics should not feel intimidating and there are countless resources available to help educators introduce it in the classroom. There are available for educator use and many robotics programs offer designed to meet specific STEM learning objectives through connected learning principles; these programs can be integrated to provide STEM learning across many contexts. Code.org also offers of third-party professional development and curricula opportunities recommended by the Computer Science Teachers Association.

To empower the next generation amid a complicated societal present and future, educators and parents need to reevaluate students’ extracurricular commitments and existing educational structures today to put the next generation on achievable paths. While few students will go on to play professional sports, every student is capable of “going pro” in STEM.