LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS

For the most part, Alex Jaeger, rural Cherokee County, is a normal boy. He loves computer games, swimming and karate class.

On the other hand, not too many youngsters his age — he’ll turn 11 in January — are college freshmen. Alex will start a full schedule of classes Jan. 14 at Pittsburg State University.

He’s the son of Wesley and Chasinee Jaeger. Mrs. Jaeger is originally from Japan and met her future husband when both were attending the University of Kansas.

Alex’s father said his son showed early signs of above-average intelligence. “We were living in Japan at the time, and he took notice of clocks and the numbers on schedules in train stations,” Jaeger said.

The family returned to the United States, and by the time Alex entered kindergarten at Riverton Elementary School, he was reading very rapidly.

“We knew he was smart, but we didn’t know he was that fast,” added Mrs. Jaeger.

Her husband said that Lori North, Alex’s kindergarten teacher, was helpful. “She got advanced materials for him, and she helped us get him out of first grade and into second grade,” he said.

Alex was placed in the gifted program. “But, at least in Kansas, there’s very little funding for the gifted,” Jaeger said. “It’s limited to 12 hours a month total, with the kids meeting once a week, mostly to work on projects.”

Meanwhile, the boy was racing through math skills, even mastering fractions through a program that took advantage of a child’s normal love of candy. “They had a candy bar, and they broke it into pieces,” Alex said.

“He was ready to go into fourth grade math,” Jaeger said. “Some of the concepts Alex knew weren’t even taught until junior high. About two weeks into his third grade year, I realized Alex was very bored in class.”

He and his wife made the decision to try homeschooling their son, using curriculum materials from A BEKA Book of Florida. “This company serves around 400,000 homeschool students in the United States, and now has streaming Internet,” Jaeger said. “They have DVDs that are pretty much like a regular classroom, but that’s too slow for Alex. I talked with the counselors at A BEKA, and they told me how important it is to keep him challenged. His mind is like a sponge, and you need to keep adding water to a sponge or it will dry up.”

His father, who has multiple sclerosis, has been doing the homeschooling. “At first we tried to match it to the 180 days of the school year,” Jaeger said, “but that was too slow for Alex, so I increased the pace. He finished the fourth grade in 2 1/2 months, and I had planned on six months.”

A BEKA has regular exams to track a student’s progress. “When I did exams with Alex, he knew everything he should know for fifth grade, so I tried sixth grade,” Jaeger said. “He had no problem with that. I found that he was getting faster and faster. In a public school they may take a week to teach a concept — Alex wants to learn it in five minutes.”

Fortunately, he said, with homeschooling, it’s possible to set the pace to the child’s abilities.

“A BEKA starts college prep in seventh grade, and starts students writing research papers in sixth grade,” Jaeger said. “In his ninth grade year, we were letting him read whatever he wanted. That summer he started reading from the college-bound list. The Baxter Springs Library has been very helpful in helping him get his reading list completed.”

Alex has become particularly fond of Michael Crichton, author of “Jurassic Park,” and Isaac Asimov, who wrote more than 200 fiction and nonfiction books before his death.

With his college preparatory work done, and after scoring 23 on the ACT, Alex’s next step was obvious. His parents met with Pittsburg State University officials to discuss enrolling their son.

“PSU has been very accommodating, and they’re looking at him as a normal incoming freshman,” Jaeger said. “Alex will be taking 15 credit hours in university choir, piano, chemistry, calculus and biology. Either I or his mother will go with him to every class.”

The youngster has plenty of time to think about his future career path. “Probably piano and something in science, biology maybe,” Alex said, adding that he’s especially interested in fish.

“When he was 3, I got a piano book for him,” Mrs. Jaeger said. “I know piano, and I think he has the brain for piano, so we looked for lessons for him. He gets the notes, but he doesn’t know how to put emotion in the music.”

Jaeger said this is probably because, at 10, Alex lacks the life experiences needed for this.

Which brings up an important point. “Alex is a 10-year-old, and he has times he wants to be a 10-year-old,” his father said. “But he wants to be in a mature environment when he’s studying. It’s a balancing act.”