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Miami Palmetto High School Senior Emma Behar is instituting Dance Marathon at her school. Dance Marathon raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network.
“We are going to fundraise all year,” she says. “Each club is going to compete against each other. At the end of the year, we will end with a dance marathon. All the money raised will go to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.”
Behar came up with the idea when visiting Florida State University while on the Florida college tour. The first step is activating the donor drive page. Behar says people will be able to send it to family members and friends to get donations.
“The big event is probably going to be in March,” she says.
Behar spent part of the summer pinning down details with Palmetto’s administration.
Behar is used to organizing events at Palmetto. She was the 2024 Class president freshman year through junior year. This year she shifted her focus to Dance Marathon and her work on student council.
“Next year my job is going to be president of student relations,” she says. “I’ll make sure all the other class representatives are doing their jobs to create a unified class.”
Behar says it’s a new student council position.
She will continue boosting school and class spirit.
“When I started high school, we were in the middle of COVID,” she says. “There was no school spirit. I realized no one was going to the football games so I started promoting the football games and creating tailgates.”
The Class of ’24 won every spirit competition last year.
“Earn Your Red was another event that I planned,” she says. “The junior class color is orange, the senior class color is red. We had a color run, where we got red paint thrown at them.”
The previous year, 70 rising seniors participated. This year, she rallied 380 rising seniors.
She’s been on the varsity lacrosse team since freshman year. Last year the team won districts for the first time in school history. Behar was named Midfielder of the Year by the team. She made the All-District First Team and the All-County Second Team.
In late June, Behar participated in the Florida Girl’s State. The program sends 350 delegates to live on the FSU campus. They held Mock State, and as state officials the girls wrote bills and debated those bills.
“I proposed a bill on boater safety,” she says. “Out of 350 bills, mine was one of 12 that got signed into law. My bill required anyone who owns or operates a motor vessel to have a Boaters Safety Identification card issued by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. It’s basically a license.”
Behar is a member of the Social Justice Teen Fellowship at Beth Am.
“We learn about social justice issues and how to combat them,” she says. “It combines Jewish text studies with monthly social justice activities.”
The teens spent four days constructing four cement columns for a science lab at a school in Guatemala.
“We helped the Long Way Home project, an organization that has built a local school out of recycled materials. They use what they find on the street.”
She is also a member of J Serve, an offshoot of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
“We organize a full day of service (the Annual Teen Day of Service),” she says. “The event is held on Martin Luther King Day.”
Her college list includes the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of North Carolina and the University of Miami. Her major will be political science.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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