Steve Milenkiy, 2024 Texas cohort

Most elementary schoolers only imagine what middle school might be like. Nine-year-old Steve Milenkiy doesn’t have to guess – he’s already taking classes there.

Steve’s path has been anything but typical. A member of the Texas cohort of National Math Stars, he accelerated rapidly through elementary math and is now completing algebra coursework typically reserved for eighth or ninth graders. That means walking into a middle school classroom every day – sometimes to amused glances, sometimes to a barrage of eighth-grade slang.

“I keep hearing curse words,” Steve says. “That’s what eighth graders do.”

That honesty, and his sense of humor, shine through in everything he does. One minute he’s explaining a prealgebra proof; the next, he’s joking about using cryptography to unlock unlimited Roblox time on mom’s computer. It’s all part of what makes Steve both deeply advanced and thoroughly nine.

His mother, Inna, remembers the early signs of his advanced thinking. “He just walked by when I was working with his older brother and kept blurting out answers,” she says. “He’s always been like that – if he sets his mind to something, he goes fast.” By first grade, Steve was doing division. By third, he had tested out of fourth- and fifth-grade math entirely. In fourth grade alone, he completed three and a half years’ worth of material, covering the full middle school math sequence and beginning algebra.

But rapid acceleration brings challenges. Socially and emotionally, it’s not easy to be the youngest kid in the room. “When I first started going [to middle school], everyone was surprised,” Steve recalls. “They kept asking if I was that young kid in math. It was super annoying.”

Thankfully, he found a supportive community through National Math Stars.

With help from NMS advisors, his family and school were able to coordinate a custom schedule. Steve now starts his school day later to skip elementary math, and he finishes by walking to the middle school across the street. There, he joins older peers for higher-level coursework – a solution that works academically and logistically.

“I’m a single parent,” says Inna. “I’ve always had to figure things out alone. But with NMS, I finally have someone in my corner. That made it easier to advocate to the district and get Steve into the classes he needs.”

Steve agrees. “The reason I’m doing self-paced algebra is because the class was going too slow,” he says. “I had to wait for everyone else.” NMS helped him move forward at the speed he craved – without sacrificing support.

That support has also helped him find community. “At school, I sometimes feel like a nerd,” Steve explains. “But at NMS events, I feel like a person.” One such event – a physics festival at Texas A&M – left a lasting impression on both Steve and Inna. After exploring hands-on activities with other mathematically gifted kids, Steve joined a math circle led by a university professor. “They were turning on their brains,” says Inna. “He doesn’t get to see that every day.”

Steve is still very much a kid. He devours manga, battles his brother in Roblox and slides down park slides with all the energy of a typical fourth grader. But when it comes to learning, his pace is anything but average.

Through NMS, he’s found both stimulation and direction. He’ll attend two summer programs this year: SEE-Math at Texas A&M and a gifted camp at Baylor University. They’re both opportunities that his family didn’t previously know existed. “We would’ve never done an out-of-town camp before,” says Inna. “NMS gave us more choices, more resources, and the confidence to go for it.”

That confidence is key. For Steve, NMS isn’t just about math, it’s about having a team behind him. “It’s not just financial,” Inna emphasizes. “Our advisor is kind, thoughtful, and really cares. I had to do the school advocacy myself, but I had the courage because I knew I had NMS behind me.”

Balancing math, manga, and middle school, Steve might still be figuring out his niche in the world, but he’s not doing it alone. And for the first time, he knows there’s a place where being smart doesn’t make him different. It just makes him Steve.