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Palmetto High School rising senior Katriona Page won the Outstanding Junior Social Science Student at the end-of-the-year awards ceremony. Previous years Page won the Freshman Core Values Award and the PAWS Award her sophomore year.
Page says she really liked her Advance Placement U.S. History class. She’s also taken AP Euro History, and AP World History.
While she loves history, her main focus has been on writing and English. She won a gold key and several silver keys in national Scholastic writing competitions. She uses her love of English to help children in reading by volunteering for Achieve Miami. She spent every Saturday since she was a freshman working with underserved children to improve their literacy and writing skills.
“I also volunteered for them in the summer program,” she says. “We worked over Zoom.
We would have breakout rooms for the Little Buddies. We would read with them and help them with writing.”
Page is on the Achieve Miami Junior Advisory Board.
“We worked on creating our own lessons,” she says.
The lessons focused on teaching the students about different cultures.
“Asian cultures, Hispanic cultures, that was the primary focus of the lessons,” she says.
“There are quite a few kids who don’t speak English. We wanted to help bring them into the community. They are from Latin American countries and there were a few Asian children.”
The children were encouraged to talk about their own cultures as well.
“We got good responses,” she says.
This summer Page is teaching English at the Breakthrough Miami program at Gulliver.
“I just really hope they walk away with a love of English,” she says.
Page has a variety of interests, one of which is learning Chinese. She’s in the Chinese program. She wanted to learn more and so she co-founded the Chinese National Honor Society.
“There wasn’t a ton of awareness of the Chinese language and we thought that it would be a great way to teach the community and offer a place for others interested in Chinese culture,” she says. “We already have more than 25 members for next year.”
Learning Chinese is important to Page because of her heritage.
“My mom is from Taiwan,” Page says. “My entire life, she’s been trying to get me and my brother into the Chinese language. In high school, we saw that Palmetto offered Chinese and took it.”
Page and her brother (an incoming sophomore) had taken Spanish in elementary and middle school. She is taking Advanced Placement Chinese her senior year.
Her other school activities include varsity cross country and varsity tennis, the English Honor Society, the Debate Club, and she’ll be vice president of the Creative Writing Club.
She’s on the school newspaper – she’s been contents/copy editor and will be senior copy editor.
She’s been on the tennis team for three years and plans to be on the team as a senior.
“I really love my teammates,” she says. “It’s a great team.”
She has also been a class treasurer for Student Council for three years and will be again as a senior.
As for college, she’s trying to decide on a major. Her choices include English, psychology or education.
She’s looking at universities in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. Her list includes McGill, the University of Toronto, Northwestern, Berkeley, and maybe Cambridge.
Last summer she was selected to attend the University of Iowa’s Young Writers’ Studio. She learned from published authors in both poetry and prose.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
