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Gulliver Prep senior Lauren Garcia-Stille is Gulliver’s Silver Knight nominee in the area of World Languages.
Garcia-Stille has been taking French at Gulliver since fifth grade through the International Baccalaureate program. Since then, she’s added a class to learn Italian and hopes to learn more languages in college.
“My dad speaks seven languages including French and Italian and he used to teach French,” she says. “I was taken by the beauty of the languages and I can practice with my dad. I would hope to learn as many as my dad.”
Her language wish list includes German, Swedish, Japanese and American Sign Language.
She’s part Swedish, which is why she wants to learn that language, and part Cuban so she also wants to learn Spanish.
Garcia-Stille has committed to Middlebury College in Vermont. She’s going in as undecided for her major.
“It’s a school known for its languages,” she says. “I’m also interested in learning environmental studies, or international studies or maybe French.”
She is considering teaching as a profession.
Garcia-Stille’s volunteers for Achieve Miami. Until COVID restrictions forced the program online, she’d go to Earlington Heights Elementary School on Saturdays to help children improve their literacy and writing skills.
“In the summer I volunteered with them virtually for all of June and July,” she says. “During the school year it’s been hard to coordinate with them.”
She enjoyed working with the children. She says there were some children who were excellent readers.
“There was an amazing boy who read 68 books last summer,” she says.
A teacher introduced to the program.
“I thought this would be a good experience,” she says. “I went one Saturday, and I absolutely loved it. It’s so rewarding. I love being around the kids.”
In the program, the children decided on which volunteer they want to read with.
“I remember, there was one Little Buddy who I worked with many times,” she says. “I would see her and she would see me and she would start jumping.”
She also worked with Breakthrough Miami a couple of summers ago but as a volunteer, so she didn’t get to interact with the children very much.
Other volunteer opportunities included Shake-A-Leg Miami. She did 240 hours with the organization that takes disadvantaged children and disabled children out on the water.
“Sometimes we would go on the water in the morning and have classroom time in the afternoon,” she says. “We were on the water as much with classroom.”
They’d paddleboard, kayak and sail.
“They had a boat to take kids to the island,” she says. “We’d also do some water sports.”
She loved being out on the water and learned the sports with the kids.
“Even though I’ve lived here all my life, I’ve never taken part in a lot of water sport,” she says. “I got to experience the water sports but also be with the kids.”
At school, she’s president of the French Honor Society, vice president of the Italian Club, a member of Rho Kappa, the History Honor Society, the National English Honor Society and the Cum Laude Society, which is limited to those in the top ten percent of the class.
She’s creating a booklet called The Little Activity Book for Little Feminists with two friends for her IB project. It will feature stories, coloring pages and word puzzles. The idea is to introduce children to the idea of feminism.
“I’m definitely a feminist and someone who is passionate about social justice,” she says.
“We start kids too late on some of these issues.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
