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Miami Palmetto High School senior Sydney Oren is Palmetto’s Silver Knight nominee in the Vocational-Technical category.
Silver Knight nominees stand out not only for their academics but for their commitment to community service. Oren has approximately a thousand community service hours.
Her Silver Knight Project is her own initiative called Supply Squad.
“It works to collect supplies for teachers in underserved communities,” she says. “We have collected over 2000 items and had three successful drives.”
She started Supply Squad because she wants to become a teacher.
“Our first drive was a back-to-school drive,” she says. “The next drive was a holiday drive.
Most last a week and a half. We talk to the schools, and we drop it off just before break or just after break.”
They request pencils, papers, soap, paper towels and sometimes even snacks such as gummy packages, fruit packages and mints. She says these are necessities that nobody thinks about that the teachers need to have.
When the initiative first started, they worked with someone from Madison Middle School that worked with Teach for America. Now Oren is collaborating with Olivia Allen, the managing Director at Teach for America.
At Palmetto, she’s the chair of Student Council’s Staff Appreciation committee for the second year. She’s been on the committee for three years.
She is also assistant CEO for Volunteering Miami, the student run organization to help students find volunteering opportunities.
“I’ve run the website,” she says. “If any organization wants to be added, it goes through me. I input it into the website daily.”
Oren is a three-sport athlete. She’s been top seed and captain of the varsity golf team. She plays center on the varsity basketball team. And she plays varsity lacrosse as a defender.
With all of that on her plate, she had developed a time management system.
“I’ll plan out my time,” she says. “I have four calendars, two in my room, one is for my mom.”
She puts family events on her calendar and makes sure has time to play with her little cousins. She also pencils in babysitting and dog watching jobs.
Oren is in the Future Educators of America club, the Jewish Student Union and the National Honor Society. She has received the PAW Award for outstanding character and service to the school and community for the past two years.
Outside of school, she is a member of the J Serve committee, sponsored by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
“I’ve planned and implemented days of service,” she says.
In the past, the day of service was only on Martin Luther King Day, but now they happen two or three times a year.
On those days, teams of volunteers go to a variety of locations and work to help others from organizing feminine hygiene products to donate, packing sandwiches for the needy and working on community gardens.
For college she’s applied to the University of Vermont, Miami of Ohio, the University of Florida, Florida State and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
She wants to work in elementary education.
She’s been a recruitment and volunteer coordinator for the Pinecrest Elementary School Carnival. She also works as a lifeguard at birthday parties. Her first-time lifeguarding, she saved a seven-year-old child.
“It was a seven-year old’s birthday party,” she says. “This kid didn’t know how to swim and didn’t notify me or the (birthday child’s) parents. I jumped in the second I saw him.”
She spent the rest of the party teaching the kids how to swim.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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