JOURNALISM: Aayana Baid
Miami Palmetto Senior High senior and Silver Knight Journalism nominee Aayana Baid teaches journalism weekly in Overtown at an after-school program for middle school students. As the Senior Copy Editor of The Panther, Baid’s passion for journalism carries into all parts of her life.
Baid created her project after noticing the gap in journalism in middle school education.
“[Journalism] wasn’t guaranteed for all public middle schools, unlike sports, arts or yearbook programs, I wanted to make sure that these kids got the chance to experience the journalism world because I know when I had my first experience with it, it truly changed the way I viewed news literacy and all things journalism,” Baid said.
While creating her project was difficult, she was familiar with the program she partnered with, Touching Miami With Love, a faith-based nonprofit helping give opportunities to underprivileged kids, whom she had previously worked with for her Girl Scout Silver Award.
“I had worked with [Touching Miami With Love] in the past, and they were just so great with providing me with a project advisor and giving me access to an environment that’s good for teaching and a good student base and after that, I think the second part was creating a curriculum,” Baid said.
A typical lesson in the program includes an icebreaker and teaches the students basic components of journalism including how to write an article.
“I teach them the components of an article, story structure and basically everything journalism. So there’s always a little bit of AP style, and then also just how to read a news story, and how to differentiate fake and real news,” Baid said.
As she has continued to teach the students, they have become more invested in journalism.
“My favorite part of the project was seeing how involved the kids got with my classes. At the beginning, it was really hard to get them interested in the topic, and I think it was really cool to see how now they really enjoy it, and it’s something they look forward to. And just seeing that change in perspective and involvement was really gratifying for me because it showed me how my hard work related, and bounced back to these kids and how they truly understood why I was doing what I was doing,” Baid said.
Baid’s inspiration to try for a Silver Knight came from her experience with her Girl Scout troop, recognizing what they have taught her about helping her community and how they have led her to get involved in her passion project. After getting her Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouting achieved by developing and implementing a plan to make a change in their community, Baid committed herself to making sure that her passion project had a lasting impact.
“I’ve been doing community service ever since I have been in school because of Girl Scouts, and it has just shown me the power of community service and the importance of it, and I know that award embodies all of those principles,” Baid said.
MATHEMATICS: Sabina Khizroev
Miami Palmetto Senior High senior and Silver Knight Mathematics nominee Sabina Khizroev has taken college-level math classes since eighth grade. Her interest in math stemmed after she tested out in Florida Virtual School Math in elementary school.
To expand her love of math to girls of all ages, Khizroev founded the Miami chapter of InteGirls, an organization running all-girls math competitions.
Having competed in many math competitions herself, Khizroev quickly took note of the gender inequality in her competitors, often having many more males than females.
“I did math competitions, and it’s very easy to notice that there were not a lot of girls in it, and it’s kind of weird. So I heard about [InteGirls], and I thought it was very cool that girls had an opportunity to go to a math competition and know there are going to be other girls there,” Khizroev said.
Unlike traditional applicants, Khizroev was approached by Silver Knight Coordinator Andrea Spivak during her English class, who encouraged her to apply.
“Ms. Spivak encouraged me to apply because she knew I had a math community service project and she came to my class and did a presentation on it,” Khizroev said.
To further the accessibility displayed within Integirl competitions, all are open to middle school and high school students with few prerequisites necessary.
“Our goal is to have it so that if you’ve never done a math competition, you won’t feel super intimidated. But then also, if you have done math competitions before, you can still go there and you still get a challenging problem with something., right? So we try to have , like, a really big mix of easy problems and hard problems. And also we try not to make sure you need too many prerequisites. So for high schoolers, the only class you need to have taken up to the competition is geometry,” Khizroev said.
The actual competition consists of two subsets in which participants compete in an individual and team round, letting the competitors meet other girls with similar passions and interests.
“So we do a competition. It has two rounds. It has an individual round and a team round. So we really emphasize the team round, because we want to be a lot of working together and meeting new people,” Khizroev said.
After the competition occurs, there is a guest panel full of influential women in mathematics, helping inspire the girls at the competitions to continue down their paths.
“We worked with the University of Miami Society of Women of Engineers, and we got people to talk about their experiences and what you can do with math,” Khizroev said.
As the Mathematics nominee, Khizreov has taken part in many advanced math classes and programs.
“I do math competitions myself, and I’ve been able to take dual enrollment math classes for a while, and I went to a math summer program so I’ve been able to learn about a lot of different areas of math,” Khizroev said.
