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Right now, three Roanoke girls are taking Washington, D.C., by storm. The three -- two rising eighth-grade students from Breckinridge Middle School and one rising ninth-grader at Patrick Henry High School -- are visiting the capital thanks to a fledgling mentorship program called GROW, based at Breckinridge. The group left Monday and plans to return Thursday.

GROW, short for Girls Rising Onto Womanhood, is the brainchild of Stephanie Doyle, a sixth-grade American history teacher at Breckinridge and the reigning Roanoke teacher of the year. The program offers young women academic support and help in making good choices as they grow up.

This is the program's first year, although Doyle has been unofficially serving as a mentor to her female students since she started teaching in Roanoke nine years ago. For now, the three are the group's only members, but Doyle expects the numbers to grow next year.

What's remarkable about Doyle's effort is not so much that she's undertaken it on top of her full-time job. Rather, it's that she seems to see her role as a mentor to young women as just as important as her role as a middle school teacher. In other words, this is not just something she does on the side.

She has spent her summer filling out Internal Revenue Service forms, writing bylaws and pulling together a board of directors to turn GROW into a full-fledged nonprofit.

"It's a lot of juggling but this is definitely what I've always wanted to do," Doyle said.

She described her efforts as a way to repay the help she had when she was growing up.

"When I was a young girl, I had a big sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters, and she made a huge difference in my life," she said.

That former mentor now lives in Maryland, and Doyle and her charges plan to visit her this week. Doyle raised roughly $2,000 to pay for meals, hotels and other expenses of the trip. For the students, the trip will offer a rare glimpse at life outside Roanoke, Doyle said.

And they have a packed agenda. The office of Justice Clarence Thomas organized a tour of the U.S. Supreme Court for them. The office of U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, has also organized a tour of the Capitol. And they've lined up a long string of museums they want to see, including the National Museum of the American Indian and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

All three girls passed their Standards of Learning tests last school year. One even earned a perfect score in history.

Doyle also took them to volunteer, an activity she plans to expand next year. She'd like to set up a monthly community outreach project at the Rescue Mission or the Salvation Army.

It's also important, she said, that the students have bonded, a bond that she hopes will expand next year when two new members join the group.

"Almost like a sisterhood," she said.

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Roanoke may not usually be associated with Formula One racing -- it's a NASCAR kind of town -- but Bill Birdlebough, a technology education teacher at Breckinridge Middle School, and his students have been slowly changing that.

Over the past three years, they've made the city a powerhouse in an annual competition known as the National Formula One in Schools Challenge, in which schools use sophisticated engineering software to build a scale model of a Formula One racing car and race against other schools.

A team that brought together students from Patrick Henry and William Fleming high schools captured the top high school spot at the national championships recently in Orlando, Fla. A team from James Madison Middle School took first in the middle school category, and another team from Breckinridge came in second in the middle school field.

That's about as close to a Roanoke sweep as you can get. It means the high school team and the Madison team have earned the right to compete in the world championship next year in London. And it means that Roanoke will be representing the entire United States.

Birdlebough, who has taken teams to world events in Malaysia and Australia, is an old hand at organizing and fundraising these trips by now. He's looking for contributions to send students to London. You can write to him at bbirdlebough@gmail.com.