Coral Gables High School senior Albany Muria is getting close to 1,000 community service hours. She has been a math mentor for students at Ponce de Leon Middle School since last year.
“There is a group of four of us,” Muria said. “We go every Thursday, and we film videos on a how to do the homework that they are assigned each week.”
The tutoring began last February and went through mid-May when the end-of-course exams were completed. They started up again in October.
The high school friends receive the homework on Wednesday and go to Ponce on Thursdays to work with the students.
Muria said she has found that the tutoring sessions help them prepare for the ACT and the SAT because they reviewed math that shows up on those college prep tests.
When Muria was in middle school, math was her strongest subject, but now it’s English.
“I’m in the online newspaper staff; I’m news editor,” she said. “I was a writer freshman year.”
This summer, she attended a workshop in journalism and the new media held at the University of Miami.
“I was there with 19 students,” she said. “We attended lectures by University of Miami professors and FIU professors. We did a news magazine and it focused on South Florida’s identity.”
At school, Muria is on the cross-country team. She has been running in meets since10th grade.
She also is in the International Baccalaureate Honor Society, secretary of Adopt-a-Freshman and the Adopt-a-Freshman coordinator.
“It’s a program I started in sophomore year,” she said. “We plan workshops for upperclassmen to mentor and interact with underclassmen.”
She started it to help students with that rough transition from middle to high school.
Next year, when she goes to college, Muria may major in English, although she particularly is interested in psychology. Her college list has included UF, FIU, UM and Boudin.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
