Palmetto High School rising senior Hali Eisenberg is a dancer. In April, she was honored as Palmetto’s Outstanding Dancer of the Year. As a freshman, she won Outstanding Freshman Dancer of the Year. As a sophomore she won the PAW award, which is given for outstanding character, integrity and a desire to make an impact on the school and the community. She was also recognized by the Women’s Historic Coalition for outstanding leadership and community service this year.
Eisenberg is in Palmetto’s dance group, Variations. She was junior officer of the team and was named Captain for her senior year. Along with performing at pep rallies and other school events, they perform at Miami Heat Half-time shows and the Panthers Got Talent show.
She’s been dancing since she was three. Outside of school, she dances at TRENDZ – she’s been with that studio around nine years. For the last five years she’s been participating in the TAZ program, working with children with disabilities.
“There have been people with autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, she says. “We’d do life skills. So, they have the social interaction.
We’ve done dance performances with them.”
Sometimes they go to the park to play basketball, sometimes they go to the movies. Other times they dance. The children who come have benefitted from the social interaction as well as the physical movement.
Dance is also the theme of her other big community service project, Traveling Tutus.
“It was my mitzvah project. I’ve continued with it,” she says. “It’s a non-profit that sends dance costumes to all girl orphanages in 23 counties. I’m an ambassador for my dance studio.”
Last summer she took costumes with her to Costa Rica to drop off at a charity. She’s also taken dance costumes and dresses to the University of Miami JMH Burn Center for a holiday party.
“My dance costumers were laid out,” she says. “By the end the little girls were walking out with them over their clothes.”
She has served as a counselor at the Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center dance camp, teaching choreography.
Eisenberg is a member of the English Honor Society, the National Honor Society, and Student Council.
This past year she served at the Student Council representative to the PTSA and EESAC.
Eisenberg is a member of the Health Information Project (HIP). HIP members go to ninth grade classrooms throughout the year to teach about health-related issues.
“We teach about drug, alcohol, health issues, and sexual orientation,” she says.
Most of the times the classrooms presentations go well, and the students ask good questions. Occasionally, some of ninth graders try to make jokes out of it and she reminds them that this is a serious situation.
They do pay attention when they get into some of the more difficult subjects.
“Probably when we talk about sex and drugs,” she says. “I think that’s more interesting to them than your physical health and eating well and nutrition.”
Last year, she went to Washington, D.C. for the L’Taken Social Justice seminar.
“We went into different groups where the instructors would tell us about different problems such as LGBT rights, gun problems,” she says.
From that, she did a presentation to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on LGBT rights.
Last summer, Eisenberg worked as an intern at Pinecrest Physical Therapy. She’s interested in physical therapy as a career, following in her mom’s footsteps.
For college, she wants to go to the University of Florida, where her father went to college. Her brother and cousin already attend. Other possibilities are Tulane and UCLA.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
