Nine-year-old Henry Marinovic is like any other third grader in his class. He often spends his free time playing video games on his Nintendo Wii or watching his favorite show, Phineas and Ferb. You would never realize at first glance that young Henry, in his super Mario brothers shirt, is currently taking high school level science and math.
“I think mathematician scientist musician is where we last were?” answered Mrs. Marinovic when helping her son answer the question of what he might want to be when he grows up. He replied with an excited “Yes!” “He is still very much nine in many ways” Marinovic explained, “He is just going to be taking a nontraditional route through school.”
The gifted third grader had already completed the entire junior school math and science program before being approached by Madison High School to test his abilities. “After hearing about (Henry), the other physics teachers and I decided to bring him in and see if he could do some activities at the high school level,” said Mr. Largo, a physics teacher at Madison. “He was able to complete the tasks we gave him, so we knew it was a good idea to have him start taking classes with us.”
Though the nine year old will be taking high school physics, you will not be seeing the young genius walking through the halls at Madison. He is instead doing private tutoring with the physics program at MHS, but it is expected that Marinovic will attend the high school and possibly reach college much earlier than the average student his age.
“He is too young for the high school at the moment, he is still like any other nine-year old, just gifted.”