It’s halfway through summer vacation, and 12-year-old E’leese Shelton is bored.
When you breeze through elementary and middle school and graduate high school before becoming a teenager, learning is your thing.
So, the trip earlier this summer to North Carolina was nice. The family visited High Shoals Falls and escaped the Florida Panhandle heat. But, given her choice, E’leese would rather be reading, writing, and learning.
“I want to go to school,” E’leese said.
She can’t. Mom’s rule.
E’leese, who lives with her family in Tallahassee, wanted to begin her next chapter early with summer classes at Tallahassee State College (TSC), but her mom, Danrell Shelton, said no.
“I said, ‘You’re gonna rest the whole summer and then pick it up in the fall. So, I’m gonna step in at this time because I don’t need you to get in college and burn out. No, we’re gonna take a break,’ ” Danrell told the younger of her two children back in the spring.
So E’leese is counting the days until Aug. 19 when the fall semester begins at TSC. It’s the first step toward her goal of becoming a pediatrician. After TSC, E’leese intends to enroll at Florida State University (FSU) and major in chemistry.
“I can’t wait,” she said.
E’leese graduated in May from Tallavana Christian School, a private PreK-12 school in Havana. She attended the school with the help of a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, made possible by corporate donations to Step Up For Students.
“It’s a great scholarship,” Danrell said. “It was a great help for her and us financially, paying for her schooling so she could keep going.”
Not surprisingly, a 12-year-old who graduates high school garners a lot of attention, but E’leese doesn’t think she has accomplished anything special.
“I don’t,” she said. “I see it as I just finished high school, and now I’m going to college. Like it’s regular.”
When E’leese was 2, Danrell bought her a LeapFrog tablet. It wasn’t long before Danrell realized E’leese was teaching herself. She was reading by that age and within two years, E’leese could handle basic math. She skipped kindergarten and first grade. She began freshman high school courses when she was 9.
“When she was in second grade, she was doing third-grade work,” Danrell said. “When she was in third grade, she was doing fourth-grade work.”
And so on.
This is nothing new for Danrell and Fred Shelton’s children. E’leese’s older brother, E’ven, who attended private and district schools, graduated high school at 15. He graduated in May from FSU with a degree in anatomy. He is headed to Tulane University in New Orleans, where he will begin medical school.
Darnell stressed both of her children were more than willing to push themselves beyond their grade year.
“I’d ask, ‘Is this too hard? Are you OK with this?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re fine with this,’ ” she said. “And they would get on a computer and do the work themselves. We barely had to check homework. We just checked for grades.”
That’s what E’leese’s parents stressed to the administrators and teachers as E’leese leapfrogged her way through Tallavana Christian. Don’t focus on her grade. Focus on her grades.
Ebony Townsend, Tallavana Christian’s principal, was E’leese’s third-grade teacher. Because E’leese was so young, Townsend said she lacked basic third-grade skills, like tying her shoes, coloring inside the lines, and penmanship.
“But the academics, she was on point every single time and made A’s throughout,” Townsend said.
E’leese worked to catch up to her classmates in those non-academic areas while surpassing them scholastically.
“Her focus and dedication are different from other children,” Townsend said. “She set forth a goal, and she wanted to reach it. And at the same time, she has really supportive parents and because of their support, you know, she was able to be successful.
“When she said, ‘This is what she wanted to do,’ they said that they were going to support it 100% She had motivation from her own brother who graduated early from school. So since he graduated early, she wanted to beat him. She has a competitive spirit about her.”
E’leese said the first time she gave any thought to her age in regard to what grade she was in happened when she was 9.
“That’s when my mom said I was starting high school classes, and then I guess I did the math,” she said.
The math said E’leese, who turns 13 in September, would enter college before she became a teenager.
“I was like, ‘Oh, give me that,’ ” she said. “I just started taking those classes, and I was like, ‘Yes. Pretty cool.’ ”
Danrell said E’leese is mature for her age, which is one reason why she was able to handle sitting in classrooms with classmates who are four or five years older.
“She’s a people person, older, younger, anybody,” Danrell said. “Her maturity level is way up there.”
E’leese admitted it was awkward at first.
“But then they just kind of treated me like I was 18 years old, like I was just like them, one of the friends or something like that,” she said.
She doesn’t expect to be intimidated when she walks into her first classes at TSC.
“I’m a little nervous, but I’m excited to basically have the college experience,” she said.
Townsend believes E’leese’s academic success will continue at TSC and beyond.
“I definitely expect a lot from her in the future,” Townsend said. “And she can do anything she puts her mind to.
As for her career plans, E’leese has wanted to be a pediatrician since, not surprisingly, a young age.
“I would go to my doctor, a pediatrician, and we would talk a lot,” she said. “One day he told me I could shadow him, and I thought that was a pretty cool idea, and from then on I wanted to be a pediatrician.”
When did that conversation take place?
“I think,” E’leese said, “I was like 3.
