Above: Honor Roll student Timothy Murray displays an award for grand champion of the Brownsville Independent School District Elementary Science Fair in November 2022.
Eleven-year-old Timothy Murray has many trophies displayed in a row by the wall of his room. During a video call, he shows me what he’s won from science projects, chess competitions, and coding programs, and ends with the largest one in his collection—a three-tiered, star-studded trophy he won as grand champion of the Brownsville Independent School District Elementary Science Fair in November 2022. It seems almost as tall as his 4-foot-1-inch frame. He explains that the project measured safety factors when driving over the Golden Gate Bridge by changing variables of speed, mass, and the size of a vehicle.
It’s hard for me to keep up as Timothy speaks and gestures excitedly at his project’s colorful tri-fold board.
