|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Palmetto High School rising senior Moie Brenner started volunteering at Friendship Circle when she was in seventh grade.
“I used to do the Life Skills program where we would go on field trips with the kids,” Brenner says. “But now because of COVID, I would do virtual calls each week. I’ve been working with the same person all year. She’s 19.”
On those calls, Brenner and the teen would have dance parties and talk about the teen’s day.
“We’d do different Buzzfeed quizzes. And play games like Hangman on the computer,” she says.
Brenner says the Zoom calls worked for them.
“Because we already knew her in person,” she says. “We have a lot of stuff to talk about.”
Before COVID, Brenner would accompany different kids on the field trips and occasionally be paired with her current friend.
She hopes they will soon be able to meet up in person. She is deciding between going in for the Sunday program or returning to the weekly field trips, once they are restarted.
Those trips consist of 15-20 people and include going to places like the grocery store or mall. Brenner says the idea is to go to normal places and help the kids learn different life skills.
“Everyone is paired off and the kids have shopping lists,” she says. “So, each pair goes around buying items and learning appropriate behavior for different stores.”
Going on those trips taught Brenner some valuable lessons.
“It taught me how to adapt to situations and how to be more accepting of everyone,” she says.
Brenner says she also volunteers as a tutor and graphic designer for a non-profit organization started by a friend called Learn to Express.
“It offers different arts classes and tutoring to kids across the country,” she says. “There are different levels and age groups of students. I’ve been doing math tutoring for elementary students and designing posts for the Instagram.”
The virtual classes were started during COVID as a way for people to be able to take art classes online.
At Palmetto, she’s in the Science National Honor Society, the Student Council Senate Recruitment Committee, the Capstone Club, the Social Studies National Honor Society, the National Honor Society, and the Thespians International Honor Society.
Brenner has been in Thespians since her freshman year. She’s in the tech class for drama.
She specializes in publicity design which includes creating posters and flyers for the theater department. She switched to the tech class this year, but due to COVID-19 and Palmetto’s renovation, the tech program was affected.
“Next year I’ll be able to learn more about sound and lighting design, but also continue to specialize in publicity design,” she says. “I was in performance classes for two years, but after competing in publicity design, I realized I liked doing design a lot better.”
She competed in Envirothon the past two years. She was on an alternate team made up of students from a variety of schools. Despite not having had worked together before, the team won the Forestry Category – which is what she specialized in.
She also competed in History Bowl her sophomore year and hopes to compete again when History Bowl resumes.
This summer she plans on going on a college tour so she can decide on where to apply.
She’s undecided on a major.
Outside of school, she is involved in BBYO on both the chapter and regional level, where she as the vice president.
Brenner plans to spend seven weeks this summer as a junior counselor at a sleep away camp in North Carolina.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
