Palmetto High School senior Kaylee de Soto is Palmetto’s Silver Knight nominee in the Math category.
This summer, Kaylee spent six weeks at MIT, attending a program to expose minorities to science and engineering.
“We took five courses, physics, calculus, biochemistry, humanities and engineering,” she says. “We had guest speakers, career seminars and we did a lot of activities.”
The summer program changed her mind on a potential college major. She’s now interested in majoring in physics.
“I’m really STEM oriented,” she says.
She likes science so much that she is vice president of competitions for the Science National Honor Society. De Soto is also president of the Mu Alpha Theta, the math honor society. Math has always been her favorite subject.
“The competitions I focus on the most are math competition,” she says. “I compete at state and regional competitions team,” she says.
She’s done well in competitions, placing in the top 15 twice, once placing sixth and another time eleventh.
At the Chemistry Olympiad at Barry University, de Soto placed fourth in the individual competition while the team took second place.
Her sophomore year they had two separate chemistry contests.
“I participated in the honors chemistry and our team got place,” she says.
Last year, it was just one group and the Advanced Placement team received second place.
She’s also taken part the Brain Bowl competitions and the Science Bowl. As a sophomore, she attended Science Bowl practices for she didn’t compete. She did participate in the Science Bowl last year and her team ended up getting fourth place. De Soto plans to compete again this year.
She’s on the Envirothon team that always dominates in Florida and often at the national level.
“They divide the competition up into specialties,” she says. “I specialize in wildlife.”
Other areas include forestry, aquatics, and soils, the current topic.
The topic last school year was invasive species, both plants and animals. This year wildlife and forestry had a lot to do with that topic.
Another competition she enjoys is the Astronaut Challenge. Teams that make it past the district level go to the Kennedy Space Center in February.
This year de Soto is president of Tutoring for Tomorrow, a tutoring organization at Palmetto that provides students with tutors and a portion of the payments are donated back to the school. Her school activities include playing viola in the advanced orchestra. She’s played viola since sixth grade.
“I just grabbed an elective out of the blue and it stuck,” she says.
Outside of school, de Soto volunteers at St. Louis Catholic Church once a week as a class assistant for the CCD program. Since her freshman years, she’s worked with second graders in the year they receive their first communion.
“A lot of it is helping them understand the concepts,” she says. “And keeping them focused.”
She enjoys working with the children.
“They are so cute. They are so sweet. I love second graders,” she says.
She’s also involved in the humanities ministry and helps with the Christmas activities. The ministry donates school supplies for the under privileged.
“We do a monthly casserole project,” she says. “We make casseroles for Camillus House.”
She and her mom make their casserole donation together. Each month they are given a new recipe to follow. Next year, de Soto will be in college. Her dream school is MIT but she’s also applying to Duke, UF, the University of Miami and Cal Tech.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
