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In the spring, incoming Miami Palmetto High School senior Sofia Strohmeier won the Core Values Award for the Class of ’24. The award indicates that the student exhibits the qualities that Palmetto students strive for.
Strohmeier is the president of the Florida Future Educators of America, a club that focuses on children and education. She was president her junior year and will be president again her senior year.
“I love being in a group of people who share that same passion for kids,” she says.
At the start of her junior year, she started a community service project called Love and Advocacy. She collects art and school supplies and donates them to Kristi House and other organizations that work with kids.
“I feel passionate about the welfare of kids,” she says.
She had a collection drive in March that netted donations for Kristi House. The leftover supplies she planned to donate to a school this summer.
Future drives will also be sponsored by FFEA and the National Honor Society.
“Drives at the beginning of the year are a good way to get people involved,” she says.
She wants the club members to assist in elementary school events such as field days. Other activities could be teacher appreciation events.
For FFEA competitions, she has written and illustrated two non-fiction picture books.
“One about the Ocean and one about the Seven Wonders of the World,” she says. “I have a printed copy now that is going to go as part of one of the book drives we are doing but I would like to print more eventually.”
The illustrations were created digitally, based on photographs.
The first FEA conference she attended was on Zoom. But she says this school year they went in person.
“There was a publisher that came up to me,” Strohmeier says. “She was very impressed with the book, and she gave me some tips.”
This coming school year Strohmeier will be vice president of the Spanish National Honor Society.
“We plan on helping ESOL students at elementary schools, maybe tutoring,” she says. “This year we hosted a couple of drives that other students were starting to help students in other countries. We were also part of Culture Day at school.”
She is the online editor-in-chief for the school newspaper, The Panther.
“I publish the stories that go on the website,” she says. “I love being part of the paper. I get to meet and interview people. I help choose which stories are going to go up in a month. Breaking news can go up anytime.”
Strohmeier is also a member of the English National Honor Society, Psi Alpha and she is vice president of PAWS.
“We work with animal shelters,” she says. “I was in charge of a mental health event with therapy dogs, Heel to Heal. They brought the therapy dogs in at lunch, and it was cool.”
At one of their meetings this year they made dog toys to give to shelters. They also made decorations for a PAWS4You Halloween event.
After leaving Palmetto for the day, Strohmeier went to Kendall United Methodist Church to work at the pre-school after-school program. This summer she planned to work at the summer camp.
“I work with kids aged 2-5,” she says. “I’m like a teacher’s assistant. I read to them. I love being there. They call me Miss Sofia, which is my favorite thing.”
Her college list includes Vanderbilt, Duke, Boston College and UCLA. She wants to double major in psychology and early childhood education and then go on to become a speech pathologist.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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