Noah has big goals, and a Florida Ed Choice scholarship is helping him reach them

TRINITY, Florida – Noah Allen was in middle school when he began to teach himself Latin. College-level Latin. He did that for two years.

He also taught himself Japanese. And Korean.

“It’s his superpower,” Noah’s mom, Josie, said. “He loves to learn.”

Noah, 16, is inherently curious. Theater, art, and music are a few areas that pique his interest. Also, the periodic table of the elements.

When he was eight, he wanted to be a nuclear physicist and work with a cyclotron. Later, he thought of a career in linguistics.

Now, as he completes the final semester of high school, Noah wants to study global law.

In Italy.

At Bocconi University in Milan.

To gain admission, he needs at least a 1340 on his SAT, which he has, and a 4.0 GPA, which he also has.

Noah is interested in law. He likes to help others. He has a passion for connecting with people from other cultures. He sees a career in global law as the perfect blend of those interests. He could work for an international organization or practice immigration law.

“I think he has a really bright future,” Josie said. “Noah is going to do amazing things.”

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Noah, who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, receives the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. The scholarship is managed by Step Up For Students.

He is home educated and learns online through the Florida Virtual School. He also uses the funds from the scholarship to cover the cost of his tutoring, SAT prep classes, and exam fees, and his registration for the Melanated Homeschool Cooperative, which provides field trips, program days for middle and high school students, a graduation ceremony and banquet, and a prom.

The scholarship also pays for his dual enrollment to Pasco-Hernando State College, where he has completed college-level courses in math, psychology, government, and humanities.

“I have been really grateful for the opportunities that the scholarship has given me,” Noah said, adding that having the SAT prep classes and exams paid for was beneficial since he took the test three times to achieve his high score.

“The scholarship helps fund his academic health and his social health,” Josie said, “which, I guess, is his mental health.”

Josie, who has a degree in early childhood education, and her husband, Aaron, who owns a construction company, realized their son was academically gifted at an early age. He was reading by age four.

“I thought, he’s going to go to school, and all the other kids are going to be learning their alphabet, and he's already reading. He's going to be bored,” Josie said. “We're going to have to figure something else out. We’re going to have to do something different with him.”

Learning at home allowed Noah to move at his own pace – accelerated in most cases – and make accommodations for his ADHD. He could schedule his schoolwork around his therapies and the family's active travel schedule.

Josie is a travel tour guide who writes a travel blog, Traveling in Spanglish.

The family, who lives north of St. Petersburg in Trinity, frequent Europe, especially Italy, where Josie and Aaron met.

Noah has traveled to Mexico, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Canada, St. Martin, and Haiti. He has done schoolwork on trains traveling between European cities and logged into an SAT prep course at 10 p.m. local time from Venice, Italy.

His time abroad fueled his passion to learn other languages and cultures, and the customs of the people he met during his journeys.

He said he couldn’t have done that if he attended a traditional school.

“I wouldn't have been able to have those experiences,” he said, “and I might be in a completely different spot than I am now.”

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Noah has acted in plays and musicals at the Center Stage Youth Theater near his home and the Stageworks Theater in Tampa. He recently appeared in “Hadestown.” He was Eugene in “Grease” and Wally Webb in “Our Town.” He’s also appeared in “Les Misérables.” 

“I really like doing theater,” he said. “I like singing, and dancing, and acting.”
For his 16^th birthday, Josie treated Noah to a weekend in New York City, where they visited the Museum of Modern Art.

“We had a blast,” he said. “I do love a good art museum.”

He can gaze for hours upon Claude Monet's “Water Lilies” or Vincent van Gogh's “Starry Night.”

“I love impressionist paintings,” Noah said. “They're really beautiful. I just like capturing the vibe of something, or the feeling of something. Not necessarily what it looks like, but how it feels to you.”

For Noah, to be immersed in a painting is the only way to see art.

That’s similar to the reasons why he wants to attend Bocconi University in Milan. He can also begin studying law as a freshman, and the tuition of $15,000 per semester is almost laughable compared to the cost of a college education in the United States. (Tuition for international students at the University of Bologna in Italy, another school that has Noah’s interest, is $2,000 a year.)

Those two are certainly perks, but global law will require Noah to interact with clients from around the world. He’ll need to learn their customs, their methods of communication, and the idiosyncrasies familiar to their culture.

Attending classes with students from Europe will give him a head start.

“I want the experience of studying abroad,” he said. “It's really helpful to be able to experience living in another culture. It really helps you integrate and maybe connect yourself with the world in a way that you can't get by going to school in a place that has a similar culture to you.”

He will be able to communicate with most of his classmates, since there is a chance he speaks their language. He is fluent in Spanish (his mom’s native language), and he’s becoming more conversational in Italian, Japanese, and Korean.

Noah’s dream is to live in Japan and practice global law. That’s where he said he sees himself in five years.

As for Josie, she sees her son doing whatever he puts his mind and heart into.

“He’s going to be a justice-seeker,” she said. “He’s going to bring changes. He’s going to help people. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s going to happen.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].