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Miami Palmetto High School senior Sabrina Donet is Palmetto’s Silver Knight nominee for drama. Donet has earned more than 700 community service hours, many of which come from her Silver Knight project called Strings Attached.
“I started in ninth grade,” she says. “It’s a free mentorship for orchestra middle school students at Vineland K-8 Center. That’s the school I attended.”
Donet plays viola but tutors in both viola and violin. She’s been playing for ten years and is currently in the Palmetto orchestra.
She’s hoping the mentoring program will persuade some of the musicians to continue playing in the orchestra in high school.
“Entering high school, a lot of the friends I had in orchestra didn’t continue in high school,” she says. “Students often feel they don’t have the resources outside of school. Lessons can be expensive. I wanted to start providing kids a way to speak to high school students for a potential path to them and receive critiques from kids from schools they want to enter.”
Currently, they have about five students in grades six through eight who are taking advantage of the tutoring.
“It’s been growing this year,” she says. “We’ve added a bass player, violin and viola.”
She is trying to recruit a cellist.
“More Vineland students have joined the orchestra at Palmetto,” she says.
The program started with her going to Vineland during the school day and giving critiques when the teacher wasn’t talking. Now, the sessions are conducted so there are more opportunities for one-on-one instruction.
Donet is also in the drama program at Palmetto. She loves both the orchestra and being in theater.
“Both are big time commitments,” she says. “They are both very fulfilling to me. I love doing it all. I didn’t want to have to decide between one or the other.”
Donet has played several ensemble characters in the Palmetto productions. In Legally Blonde she played a student and was involved in the dance numbers and the group songs.
“This year I was selected to play Tanya in Mamma Mia,” she says.
She’s performed several competition roles. One of the ensembles earned a perfect score at the district competition and was performed at the state competition.
“I took theater during sixth grade but that was the only year it was offered,” she says. “I started in ninth grade in high school.”
In addition to drama, Donet is also the former president of Tri-M, the music honor society, serving as historian this year.
She’s also a member of the National Honor Society.
Her junior year the American Legion chose her to go to Girl’s State.
“That was an incredible program,” she says. “We were encouraged to bring drafts of bills we would want to bring before the legislature. My bill, the Dignity Beyond the Desk Act, amended a FL statute mandating that schools with 50 percent kids on free lunch would be mandated to provide feminine hygiene products in all female bathrooms. I got to watch it move through the house and the senate. I got to see people be invested in it.”
The program allowed her to see how many voices get factored into a finished product in government.
The experience makes her want to pursue lawmaking going into college, focusing on politics and law.
Donet is committed to the University of Florida Honors College where she will major in political science.
“I originally wanted to do nursing,” she says. “Going into law allows me to advocate for people when they can’t be heard.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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