Whether you’ve chosen to supplement your high school homeschooling with individual online courses or enrolled your teen into online high school as a full-time endeavor, you have a unique opportunity to teach your teen how to learn and even adapt those techniques to the specific needs of your young learner.

A lack of confidence in your abilities as a teacher can easily sideline the desire to homeschool your high school-aged teen but there’s no need to panic. When you become a homeschooling parent, you’re not standing in as the replacement for an entire school system; you’re just adding a new element to your role as provider, protector, and guide to the young person you already know so well. And since you went to school once before yourself, this new role will likely be more doable than you think.

Doesn’t it seem like everyone is homeschooling? And if they’re not, they’re thinking about it or their kids are begging them to think about it?

There’s a reason it seems that way. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education estimates 1.8 million 5- to 17-year-old students were homeschooled for the 2011-2012 school year. (It’s worth nothing, the highest percentage were high schoolers.) Obviously, that’s not everyone. But it’s not an insignificant number, especially considering the number of homeschoolers in the U.S. increased by nearly 1 million between 1999 and 2011.

It’s a hot topic on the minds of all college-bound online, homeschool, and traditional high school students (and their parents): “How will I pay for college?”

We’re a nation that loves our options. 50 ways to order a simple black coffee. 10,000 decorative iPhone cases. Three new ways to get to our jobs thanks to GPS. And then there’s school. Where it used to be that the only way to earn your high school diploma was in a traditional brick and mortar school or through a GED, today more and more people are exercising their options to choose transferring their high school credits to an online high school to earn their high school diploma online Who are these daredevils? People just like you. The students who come to us considering an online high school include: