Hello everyone, I’m Reggie, the third contributor to teachthemright.me. I’m now 17 years old, and have done many things in academia that many find odd. You’ve heard from Lexi and Devin, and now it’s my turn. For my first post, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce myself, what I’ve done, and point out some facts about homeschooling.

Where do I start…

Well I officially started homeschooling in 2004, entering Kindergarten. Over the years, I would end up spending my days at the dining room table, working through normal subjects like math, history, English, science… you know, normal stuff. Nothing noteworthy at this point in my life … except for earning the Leadership Award at my Boy’s & Girl’s Club, maybe some other stuff too … but that’s irrelevant to the topic at hand.

I remained homeschooled until entering the 10th grade, when I accepted the opportunity to enter into the program called the Early College Alliance @ Eastern Michigan University (which I will abbreviate to ECA). This program allows high school students entering the 10th and 11th grades to have a full-time college schedule and earn up to 60 free college credits, equivalent to an Associate’s degree, while completing their high school diploma. Sounds cool, right? Well, before being allowed to take college classes, students are required to go through “bootcamp” classes, as I like to call them. After completing these classes, and being deemed prepared for college, students gradually start to take on a full-time college schedule. In my 2014 cohort, half of the students only needed one 15-week semester of bootcamp classes before entering college, while the other half needed to take another semester of classes because the ECA staff did not think that they were ready to move on.

These bootcamp classes were hard, and by hard I mean Monday through Friday stay-up-till-11-at-night-doing-homework hard. You might imagine why only half of students were thought ready to move to college.

I’m happy to say that I was one of the half that did move on. I walked into my first college class at the ripe age of 15 and a half. I went through my college classes just fine, and ended up graduating high school a year and a half before my class. In the end, I had earned 32 free college credits (I was not able to earn the other 28 credits that were available to me, because I had moved to another location and had to leave the program).

So here I am, a living, breathing testimony to what you’ll read about on this blog. We know what we’re talking about (at least most of the time), having been homeschooling for over a decade now. You can trust us.

Think I’m just an exception to the rule? Aren’t most homeschooled students dumb, and antisocial? Read some of these points given by the National Home Education Research Institute about homeschooled students versus everyone else:

• “Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income”.

• “Home-educated students typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests that colleges consider for admissions”. It is worth mentioning that I scored in the 90th percentile on my SAT (which means that 90 percent of all students taking the SAT scored at or below me).

• Studies show that homeschooled students, “go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population”. (Raises hand) I agree with that.

• “The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem”. Anything you’d like to say, socialization folks?

Enough proof for you? Research has shown that homeschoolers typically do just as good as everyone else, if not better. Need more proof? You can check out the rest of the research article HERE.

Want to find out more about the ECA? You can check them out HERE.

I hope you guys enjoy the content on teachthemright.me.