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Miami Palmetto High School junior Cooper Haller is a founder of the Teen Tutoring Society, a group of teens that goes to Palmetto Middle School on Thursdays to tutor students who need academic help.
The high school students have been going to the middle school since the beginning of the school year.
“We tutor every subject the kids need help with. We’ve seen a range of all middle school subjects. There are some regulars every week, but there is definitely a rotation of kids.”
The tutoring has helped the middle school kids. Haller says some students have told him that their grades have improved because of the tutoring.
While they can tutor any subject, they spend the most time working on math.
“Sixth and seventh grade math, and some algebra, that’s what the majority of the kids needed,” he says. “Some kids come every week. Others come in because their parents are upset with them because they aren’t doing well in class.”
And some kids come in because they don’t understand a new lesson and need help to comprehend the subject.
At Palmetto High School, Haller is the Event Coordinator of the Finance Club and the National Business Honor Society. The clubs are run by the same board.
“We’re learned a lot of about the ins and outs of investing and stocks,” he says.
They have been working on moving the clubs in the direction of teaching students about the basics of finance and the stock market.
“I’m thinking about doing something in the finance business field. It’s good for us to have background knowledge,” he says.
Haller is a member of the National Honor Society and the Jewish Student Union. He’s also on the Student Cabinet for the Class of 2026.
Outside of school, he is active at Temple Beth Am.
“I’ve done many different events like the Milk and Honey Event for Rosh Hashanah,” he says. “We make baskets and drive them to older people’s home. And I volunteer for Everything but the Turkey, a Thanksgiving event. We make baskets.”
He’s in the Beth Am Social Justice Teen Fellowship.
“We do all sorts of community service projects,” he says. “We went to the first Black police station in Overtown and took a tour of that. I really thought the first African American police station we went to, it was impactful. We spoke to two former African American police officers.”
He said the police officers got little credit for their work because they were African American.
Around the holidays, the teens also organized toys for foster kids.
“We were behind the scenes,” he says. “We never met the kids, but we helped them immensely.”
Currently, he’s playing basketball in the Beth Am Basketball League for the first time.
Haller works as an umpire for the Howard Palmetto Baseball & Softball Association. He’s been an umpire since ninth grade after playing for Howard Palmetto since kindergarten.
“My first year of umpiring I donated my salary back to the league but since then, I have been doing it as a paid job,” he says. “I umpire for the coach pitch division. The kids are mostly 8-10-year-olds. It’s an action-packed intensive division.”
He enjoys umpiring the games.
While college application season is still a ways off, he has started visiting potential schools.
He’s gone to see the University of Georgia, the University of Miami and he’s interested in the University of Wisconsin and Penn State University. He is planning to study business.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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