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As president of the Westminster Christian School French Club, senior Maia Alvarez Ramirez decided to branch out and created a French Club at Westminster’s Elementary School.
“We would meet with elementary students and give them French lessons while doing activities with them,” she says.
The elementary school students begin taking Spanish in third or fourth grade, so Alvarez Ramirez wanted to give them the option to learn an additional language.
“You teach them about the culture, vocabulary, and geography,” she says. “We’d bring in different francophone foods every week.”
Alvarez Ramirez and five other high school students worked with approximately thirty children ranging in age from six to ten.
She’s been the French Club president since her sophomore year, which seems a natural fit since she was born in Paris and is a French Venezuelan. She’s been living here for 14 years.
“My family thought it was important to keep the culture so I took French at school,” she says.
She visits France every summer to see family. Her mom’s side of the family is from Venezuela while through her dad’s side she is half French and half Spanish.
Depending on the COVID-19 situation, she’d love to expand the program.
“I’d love to do it again. I actually never thought I’d like to teach,” she says, “But I really enjoy it. I have to talk to the school and see what they think and what they are doing.
Hopefully second semester they can start that again.”
She joined Model United Nations this school year.
“One of my interests is foreign affairs,” she says.
She also a member of Cafecito, the Latin American Heritage awareness club. They organize mission trips to the Dominican Republic.
While she hasn’t been able to go on the mission trips, she has helped with fundraising.
She’s also in the Geography Bee Club, the National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, the Science National Honor Society, the English National Honor Society, the National Foreign Language Honor Society, National Art Honor Society and Rho Kappa.
She’s also in the Emerald Scholars program, an honors program for the top students in the class.
Through her high school career, she’s done two internships.
The first, from July to August 2019, she shadowed one of the pediatric neurologists at the We Mind Institute.
“I got to shadow her consults,” she says. “She would explain to me how she came up with the diagnosis and then explain how the treatment plan would work.”
The second internship was at Key Biscayne Psychology, where she shadowed a clinical psychologist.
“I learned about different evaluations,” she says. “The doctor explained to me how he would build treatment programs and how they were individually tailored. Each patient would be treated differently because of the problems they might be facing.”
Her interests range from psychology to international relations but she’s been applying to college as a psychology major.
While she has a busy life, she takes time to volunteer at Camillus House. She is given a recipe each month that she prepares, freezes, and delivers to Camillus House.
“You are helping feed homeless people,” she says.
She says the situation has gotten worse for homeless people because of the coronavirus so she’s happy to help.
When the COVID-19 situation is over, she hopes to go back to traveling. She’s already visited 32 countries.
“I could spend my life traveling,” she says. “When you go, you get to interact with the culture, learn new languages, and interact with the people, and I think that’s really interesting.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
