Miami Palmetto High School senior Rachel Salas has earned more than a thousand community service hours. Her current project entails collecting old markers and sending them to Crayola for recycling.
She has 60 boxes in classroom around the high school.
“Every two weeks I go around and collect the markers from the different classes,” she says.
“So far I’ve collected around a thousand markers.”
The used markers don’t have to be from Crayola. They can come from any company.
“I get a lot of Expo markers from the teachers,” she says.
She began her volunteering with her bat mitzvah project. At that time, she collected school supplies for underprivileged schools. For her major high school project, she wanted to do something along the same track.
“I came to realize how many dried-up markers I had,” she says, adding that she talked it over with her mother. “We thought collecting markers would be a simple way of helping the environment without doing anything crazy but it does help the environment.”
Salas began collecting the markers in the middle of her junior year. She sends them to Crayola approximately every four months, depending on the number of markers collected.
She plans to continue the project through the send of the school year. After that, she hopes her brother will continue the project next year.
Salas is the senior class secretary. This is her first year in that position. Her freshman and sophomore years she was on the cabinet, helping out with Student Council and Class of 2020 events.
“I helped out with Homecoming and all the different activities they had,” she says.
Last year, she was the Staff Appreciation Chair for the Student Council Senate. The committee gave out cards at the beginning of the year to teachers and staff. They asked teachers what their favorite snacks were and for their birthdays they’d bring the teacher their favorite snack and give them a card.
They also had a pen pal system. Every student had their own teacher and gave them cards for every holiday.
For Staff Appreciation Week, they got them pens with that said “Palmetto Loves Their Teachers.”
“We set up an Uber Eats thing,” she says. “We had the teachers tell us what kind of coffee they wanted. We would bring it to the teacher.”
She’s a member of the Psychology Honor Society, Psi Alpha Honor Society and takes part in events sponsored by the community service organization, Key Club.
“I started sophomore year,” she says. “We do toy drives. One time we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and gave them to homeless people. For the hurricanes, we brought in supplies for the victims. For Irma and Dorian.”
She also in the Spanish Honor Society and for that, she has volunteered to help feed the homeless. She and other members go to the Old Cutler Presbyterian to package food that is then passed out to the homeless.
And, she’s co-captain of the Palmetto Bowling team.
As far as college, she is still undecided on her major. She’s applying to the bigger universities in Florida, such as the University of Florida, the University of Central Florida, Florida International University, Florida State, the University of South Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University.
“I’m considering becoming a dietician. I’m very into health,” she says. “And proper eating.
My grandma was a dietician. I know she really liked that. I think I’d be interested in having my own business to help people who are looking to eat better than people who are in the hospital.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
