Palmetto High School junior Morgan Elmslie has learned to be brave in sharing her writing.
“I was an in-the-closet writer,” she says. “This year I got more comfortable sharing it. I wanted to. But I was scared about what people would think.”
Which is a problem for a creative person because creativity requires showing your work to the world.
As a freshman, Elmslie was in the Creative Writing Club and later joined the English Honor Society. This year she has several poems in the literary magazine being put out by the English Honor Society.
Elmslie is copy editor for the Panther, the Palmetto newspaper. As a staff member, she’s attending the National Scholastic Press Association conference this spring. The staff is picking up awards won by the newspaper.
Reading is also important to her. In 2015, she initiated a book collection drive called Bring Your Old Books (BYOB) and has distributed more than 2,000 books to schools and organizations.
She began the collection at the Coral Reef Yacht Club.
“I asked the commodore if I could send out a flyer,” she says. “I had no idea! We had bins of hundreds of books.”
She also received donations from a family she babysat for and local children’s author Christina Gonzalez.
“It’s such a broad kind of thing,” she says. “I can get books from anywhere and anyone. I can have a conversation and they’ll say I have books I can give you. I can get donations, contact schools and drop them off. It’s a very manageable one person job. Even though my parents have helped me a lot.”
Several schools she donated to put together a Scholastic type book fair. Instead of having the children going through and buying books, the children choose the books they wanted to read and the books were given to them for free. The schools that did the give-away book fairs included Florida City Elementary, Pine Lakes Elementary and West Homestead K-8.
She does more than collect and distribute books, she also volunteers at the Golden Glades Academy in Homestead to help children improve their reading.
“We read with them and we do comprehension checks,” she says.
Even having to go early on a Saturday morning doesn’t dampen her enthusiasm for reading with the kids.
Elmslie also loves science. She’s participating in competitions for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Society of Women Engineers.
She’s an athlete, competing on Palmetto’s varsity lacrosse team. She began playing lacrosse in seventh grade and joined Palmetto’s team in ninth grade.
Last year, Elmslie went on a 12-day field trip to Eastern Europe last spring break. Although the trip was supposed to be limited to juniors and seniors, the teacher organizing the trip allowed her to go since her brother was signed up. The trip began in Berlin and included five countries. They visited where the Berlin wall had been and went to Auschwitz Death Camp.
“It was indescribable,” she says. “It makes you cry but then you can’t cry. How did this happen?”
This spring break, she’ll visit South Africa.
Although it’s still early, she’s thinking about college. She’s leaning toward a journalism or English major.
Instate applications will go to FSU and UF while out-of-state applications will go to Tulane, Elon and the University of North Carolina.
Outside of school, Elmslie volunteers as a buddy for the Miracle League, she’s a Relay for Life team captain, and on the YMCA Teen Leadership Council. She’s taught children how to sail at the Coral Reef Yacht Club.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
