Eleven-Year-Old Is Diminutive In Size But An Academic Giant At MDC

Mauricio Berardinelli and his teammates on the Kendall Campus robotics club heard the whispers about a baby-faced pre-teen who was dazzling classmates in a digital circuits course.

So when some of them saw a boy walking with his mother on campus two months ago, they approached. 

“Hey are you, Noah,” the adolescent with black floppy hair and a hint of a mustache recalls them asking.

Noah Thomas, who is 11, quickly retorted: “How do you know this?”

Well, it seems everyone knows who young Noah is these days. It’s hard not to notice a five-foot-tall prodigy who is flexing a 4.0 GPA and has accumulated 18 college credits four years before he can acquire a driver’s license.

“It’s kind of awesome that he enjoys what he’s doing,” said the 37-year-old Berardinelli, who successfully recruited Noah to join the robotics club after their first encounter. 

Miami Dade College started offering dual enrollment courses to middle school students in 2015. And although the school doesn’t track how many homeschooled kids like Noah have taken advantage of the program, 129 Miami-Dade County Public Schools students have enrolled so far this school year. 

“He’s essentially a regular kid who’s just extremely bright, pleasant, kind and thoughtful,” said Daniel Wynne, who serves as Noah’s homeschool evaluator and has also taught him language arts and humanities classes. “He’s everything you’d want your child to be.”

Noah enrolled in three courses at the College this semester—world history, the aforementioned digital circuits and an English composition class. For the robotics club, he is working on a robot for the NASA-led annual LUNABOTICS competition and is in charge of ensuring its codes function adequately. 

Based on his age, Noah would be considered a fifth-grade student. However, homeschooling education is potential-based, instead of grade-level based, but he has tested at a high school level.

His mother Rani Thomas oversees his home-based education and basically serves as his principal. She makes sure her son learns essential subjects such as art and history and he takes English three times a week.

Noah’s curriculum follows the family’s philosophy that every moment is a teaching moment and learning never ends. 

They have visited more than 25 countries, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, Scotland, France and Germany, learning a bit about each place’s history along the way. 

Rani also takes Noah to educational sites such as Continental Park and Shark Valley National Park and they analyze the plants and local ecosystems.

Ten years ago, the family traveled to Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington, DC for about six to eight months. Rani took that opportunity to teach. 

They went on the Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile-long path through Boston, Massachusetts that includes a collection of museums, churches, parks and other historic locations that tell the story of the American Revolution. 

“It was not like we studied the entire year and then we went for a field trip,” Rani said. “​​ Life was the field trip where we just learned additional information about where we were.” 

For fun, Noah plays tennis and takes piano lessons. In July of 2020, he virtually earned a black belt in taekwondo during a one-hour break from his summer Digital 2D animation course that was led by the Walt Disney Family Museum.

If you think all of that sounds too overwhelming, Noah quickly assures you that he knows how to take a step back when he has to: “If I’m tired from doing something, I take a break,” Noah said nonchalantly.

The rigorous roadmap to Noah’s education was set by his older brother, 17-year-old Nathan Thomas. 

In 2018, Nathan earned an associate’s degree in math from MDC. Three years later, he completed his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Florida International University. Nathan, who wants to focus on the nanotechnology field and perhaps teach at MDC one day, is currently working on his doctorate degree in electrical engineering at FIU.

“It’s cool to see that he’s doing what I did, but not making the same mistakes I did,” Nathan said. “He’s on track to do better.”

Noah plans to pursue a career in engineering and technology and is considering becoming a software engineer.

“There’s no reason to expect that he’s not going to be fantastically successful in whatever career he chooses,” Wynne said.