Many high school students leave for school in the morning and say goodbye to their parents, but for some, their parents come to school with them every day. This may seem odd to many people, but for these few students when they go to school to learn, their parents come with them to teach.

It is rather common at Neshaminy High School to have students whose parents also teach in the school. These students, may be better off having their parents work in their school. They are generally motivated to do well in school because their parents are teachers. In some ways there is pressure for these students to do well in school to live up to their parent’s standards.

“Everyone expects me to be good at really good at math whether it’s teachers or my friends,” Sarah Kelly said, a senior at Neshaminy and daughter of Janice Kelly, a math teacher here at Neshaminy “I am pretty good at math, but when I get a problem wrong and people say ‘aren’t you supposed to be good at math?’ that’s annoying. We all make mistakes.”

It is commonly depicted in movies and TV shows as a “nightmare” to have a student’s parent working in their school. Most of these shows and movies commonly forget that whether or not your parent is a teacher, they still want their children to succeed. It is similar to having  parents advocate for their child at home.

“At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to success is the positive involvement of parents,” Jane Dee Hull, former governor of Arizona, noted.

These students also seem to be more motivated to do well in school. The pressure that gets put on them pushes them to do better in school. The teachers in the school are also friends with many other teachers so there is always a set of eyes on these students.

“Having a parent in my school has had a positive effect on my education because she knows all of my teachers, and they’ll tell her if I do bad [in school],” Alex Dampman, explained, freshman at Neshaminy and son of Tara Dampman, a biology teacher here at Neshaminy.

Sometimes it seems like a bad thing to have a parent teaching in their child’s school, but these students recognize the value to having their parents being with them. They are available for help with homework, preparing for tests, and above all being a parent.

“The first year the Keystones were given to us, my mom would have me practice problems once a week for an hour, and it really helped- I scored very well,” Kelly said. “There’s no way I could’ve scored that well if I didn’t have her help. But I think it’s also important to remember that she helps with other things aside from math. She’s a teacher even when she’s not a teacher, and I think most students can say that about their parents.”