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Westminster Christan School senior Sophia Medina is a math whiz. She’s taken all the math she can at school so she’s now doing Calculus 3 and Analytical Geometry through dual enrollment classes at Miami-Dade College.
She’s sharing her love for math with fourth and fifth graders at Westminster Elementary School. Once a week she meets the students after school to teach them different math skills and is also encouraging the kids to enter math competitions.
Last year, the competitions were in-house but now they’re working on including other schools. The competitions prepare the students for high school competitions. Medina started the program her junior year.
“I started it on my own.” Medina says. “I had the idea for a math club. I spoke about it with a teacher. She was a sponsor to me.”
The meetings are held after school, starting at 3:00 p.m. The students are learning an analytical way of thinking.
“We call it Elementary Math Olympiad,” she says. “Math Olympiad is nationally recognized.”
Most of the meetings were practices with mock competitions at the end. They did hand out awards at the end of the year.
Medina also has a high school club for orchestra students.
“It’s called Heartstrings,” she says. “It was run my freshman year, and then no one started it again, so I started it again my sophomore year. We since expanded.”
They used to send videos of Westminster students playing Happy Birthday to nursing home residents. Now the students are going to nursing homes and medical facilities such as the Miami Cancer Institute around holidays to play.
“We’ve gone and played Christmas music and in October we’ve gone and played classical,” she says. “It’s a group of about 10 of us.”
They still do the birthday videos, but Medina says they hope to also go back to play for residents in person.
“We do about four a year,” she says. “We want to do more this school year. Now that I’m a senior, I have a little more help from other seniors.”
They work with elementary school orchestra students as well through Orchestra Buddies.
“We tutor elementary students on Thursday after school,” she says.
She’s the First Chair Violin of the Chamber Orchestra and vice president of Tri-M, the music honor society.
Medina is also the cheerleading captain.
“I’ve been a cheerleader for seven years,” she says.
Another one of her extracurricular activities is Student Leadership.
“We plan out all the student activities, homecoming, prom, and homecoming week,” she says. “I’m a member of a specific committee for homecoming. We plan out all the details.
We look at venues and specific designs.”
Outside of school, Medina is a member of Twenty Little Working Girls. The service organization partners with non-profits and community organizations helping with fundraising and volunteering. They do drives to collect items for a women’s shelter and volunteer at Breakthrough Miami, the one based at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart.
“It’s like a weekend camp for girls. We get a group of girls, and we will entertain them and give them activities to do. Like painting activities. Or STEM activity. We have to plan out the activities.”
Medina hopes to go to a northern state for college. Her application list includes Boston College, Notre Dame, and in state, the University of Florida. Her major will be Business Finance.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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