2 weeks Ago
Joe Petraro, 11, poses in LSU swag. He's working toward his undergraduate degree online. When Joe Petraro was about eight years old and attending school in New York, he was placed in special education by his school district because teachers and administrators assumed he needed it.
At the beginning of the school year, his teacher, Mrs. Sardi, noticed that even though Joe appeared to be zoning out in class, he knew all the answers. The traditional classroom just might not be the best place for him to thrive.
“School feels like a jail,” Joe said. “You're locked up, surrounded by these gates, all the doors are locked. You can't move around — you have to ask for the hall pass.
It's not good for your health.” Joe Petraro started college at LSU online over the summer after graduating high school. After being tested and reevaluated, adults in Joe’s life figured out that he has Tourette’s Syndrome, and he’s super smart.
He skipped fourth grade, transferred to an online hybrid school which allows students to move at their own pace and proceeded to speed through middle and high school in two years. Over the summer, he started as a student at LSU through their virtual program where he is studying sports management in hopes of making sports inclusive for everyone. “He feels like there should be no barriers — everyone should be able to play.
” Joe’s mother, Anne Petraro said. He wants to remove barriers to participation in sports whether it be due to economic factors, social factors or (visible or invisible) disability. “He feels like athletes are under a lot of pressure, and he wants it to be more about teamwork instead of, ‘This one's the greatest.
’ Like, what about the guy on the bench who's cheering the team on?” Online classes can be more flexible for people who have nontraditional paths in education. Whether it be a busy work schedule, challenges with the classroom environment, or physical barriers to access, the flexibility that online classes provide a way for people to further their education when they otherwise may not be able to. Joe Petraro proudly holds his high school diploma while wearing an LSU shirt.
The 11 year old is working toward his college degree in sports management through LSU's online program. For Joe, that means taking college classes from his home just outside of New York City. “At 11, we [his parents] don't really feel comfortable putting him on a college campus,” Petraro said.
“He would probably be fine, but we would be a little nervous.” The online format allows Joe to continue his education and specialize in something he’s passionate about. This summer, he particularly enjoyed taking classes with Olga Khokhryakova, a third-year doctorate student and teachers assistant in the school of kinesiology.
Khokhryakova interacted with Joe via online forums and email, and she said that his work was very mature for his age. She's interested in his work professionally. "When I was reading all the assignments, I would never think that person who wrote it was 11 years old," she said.
If not for the difference in content when questions asked about experiences students had in high school, she said she wouldn't have noticed a difference in the quality of his work and work turned in by his older classmates. According to Christina M. Bourg, the executive director of marketing & partnerships LSU Online & Continuing Education, the asynchronous classes are taught by the same professors who teach in-person across LSU’s campuses and provide the same quality of education that LSU provides with opportunities to interact with classmates through online discussion forums.
Joe Petraro (right) and his friends from Boy Scouts. He is still involved in extracurriculars at home while he pursues his undergraduate degree. The program currently offers 137 fully online programs, and they have over 16,000 students enrolled for the 2024 academic year.
At the moment, these courses are not offered to the on-campus student population in the same way (a student can’t, say, opt to take half their courses virtually if they’re enrolled on campus). Bourg says the reasoning is because their “target market is truly adult learners and non-traditional learners.” For kids like Joe and others, the model offers an alternative to uprooting their lives and moving to a new city for college.
Joe’s dad, Ozzie Petraro, comes from a family of avid LSU fans, Anne Petraro said. Plus, the sports management program, made LSU’s online offerings a great fit for Joe and his first choice among the 28 colleges he applied and was admitted to. There’s a lot of discourse online about burnout experienced by many children identified as “gifted” at a young age.
Petraro, who works as a therapist, had her own hesitations too. Joe Petraro, 11 year old taking classes online at LSU loves sports and plays baseball. “Everyone says, ‘Oh, where's his childhood?’” she said.
She even raised her own concerns to an advisor about her son’s educational path: What about prom? But with the online courses, he can still go to prom with someone when it’s time, he’s just also doing college coursework now. “I had to look past a lot of my own biases to be like, ‘That's right, everyone's different, everyone's unique,'” she said. Joe also has an active social media presence on Instagram as "JoetheGamer " — where he has more than 346,000 followers.
Despite his large platform on social media and nontraditional path through school, Joe is still very much a kid. He plays travel baseball and basketball, and he dances. He spoke to the newspaper through a painting mask while on site, helping to paint the building that his Boy Scouts troop meets in.
They’re making it more physically accessible as part of a mentor's Eagle Scout project. He explained, mid-interview, that he was missing the “best part” — so he ran to join them after thirteen minutes. He was bullied in the past, so he started the Joe’s Be Kind Campaign to encourage people to foster inclusive communities and change the world for the better.
His experiences inform his nonprofit work. The campaign raises money to donate to various nonprofits and has donated to everything from digging wells in Nigeria to buying modified video game consoles for children hospitalized with cancer. Joe had cancer and is in remission, but he doesn't want that to be a focus of his life.
A sign for one well in progress as part of Joe Petraro's initiative, Joe's Wells for Humanity which aims to help provide sustainable, clean water for villages in Nigeria. When asked what drew him to these projects, he responded simply, “because I had cancer at some point. And being kind is treating people how you want to be treated.
” He tries to bridge generational divides through his “Adopt-A-Grandparent” program, pairing children in local schools up with elderly people with similar interests so they can get to know each other. He participates in fundraisers and has spoken at events raising awareness about Tourette’s. “Sometimes, I feel like his Uber driver,” Petraro quipped.
Joe is on a unique path, and he’s planning to take college slow. But wherever he ends up, he has plans to encourage people to be kind..
