This fall, while the average 15-year-old prepares for class, one 15-year-old will be busy preparing class lessons.
Donovan Keith, a high school graduate since May 2001, has been teaching 3D animation and video production to middle and high school students since he was 13.
The California teenager is also well-known on animation mailing lists for his expertise, offering advice to fellow animators, some of whom are college professors. He's also designing a set of character animation tools for Maxon Computer, an animation software company.
Donovan teaches after-school classes to at-risk high school students several times a week and instructs gifted middle school students on the weekends.
"(Animation) was just something that I had a lot of experience in, and I really wanted to share that with other people because I enjoy it so much," he said. "Teaching seemed like a really good way to do that."
Like many teachers twice his age, Keith found that "the biggest issue for me was gaining respect. I overcame that by demonstrating that I had a good knowledge of what I was trying to teach.
"As soon as I overcame that, students seemed to really enjoy (the class). It was a lot of fun. It took a more laid-back formula than most classes. It wasn't so much direct instruction as it was helping students explore interests in a certain area."
Initially, he offered to teach as a volunteer when kids in the school computer lab continued to ask him about his animations. Now he's paid an hourly wage out of a youth outreach fund.
Donovan said that he's never had a problem balancing work as a student and instructor: "It was remarkably easy doing all my schoolwork and teaching."
This fall, instead of heading to a four-year college immediately, he'll continue teaching, taking classes at Chabot College, and designing tools for Maxon Cinema 4D.
"He's truly a phenomenon," said Anne Powers, a fellow animator and professor at Roane State Community College in Tennessee. "He's kind of the savior of the Cinema world."
Powers said that for the past few years, she frequently asked him questions about the software on a listserv.
"I thought this was a very sage-like, wise, older person who knew everything you needed to know about Cinema," she said.
"Then I went to Siggraph and he walked up to me with his little name tag and introduced himself. It was a standard double take –- I almost choked."
Paul Babb, the president of Maxon Computer, calls Donovan "extremely talented and extremely motivated."
"At 15, he's doing the type of customized work and production that high-end studios are doing," Babb said.
His teaching talents are recognized beyond his former school. The Stanford Academy for New Media offered Donovan a job teaching this summer, but he declined so he could take two community college courses, programming and philosophy, instead.
Next fall, he wants to attend a school where he can blend his love of art and computer science.
He hopes to create tools that artists understand, yet are still powerful and easy to work with.
Donovan had initially considered MIT, but the school does not have a visual arts program. He's not planning to apply to Stanford, either.
"Being from Berkeley, it's practically sacrilege to go to Stanford," he joked. "My sister would not be very happy with me –- she's a Cal graduate."
He's looking at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Cruz -- because it's by the beach.
"I do a lot of surfing so that would save me an hour-and-a-half trip."
