A behind-the-scenes look at the lives of your local faculty kids
By Sophie Feldman ‘20
Each morning, I pull into the faculty lot around 7:30a.m., sometimes before the sun has risen. My mom, Upper School (US) French teacher Wendy Wilkinson, and I walk to the math building together, then part ways. She heads to the Modern Language building and I go to Dant, where I settle into the couch in the Outdoor Ed Office for the next half hour, blasting The Cure or some other music I’m into. Director of Outdoor and Global Education Programs John Harnetiaux always makes a comment on my music: “I knew it was you!” he exclaims as he rounds the corner. (We share similar music taste, a fact I discovered at US Head Aline Garcia-Rubio’s annual back to school faculty party.)
Through my seven years at Catlin Gabel School (CGS), I have had a unique experience as a faculty kid. I have gotten to know the faculty personally, and have come to truly appreciate the connections I have formed with a wider range of community members and the perspectives they have allowed me to see.
While I am truly grateful for the experience I have had at CGS as a faculty kid – how involved it has allowed me to become – it wasn’t always the easiest. I was interested in how other faculty kids felt about their unique circumstances, so I spoke to seven other faculty kids about their experiences and have compiled a pro/con list of being a faculty kid so that the community may better understand the wonderful, sometimes complex dynamics of having your parent work at your school. Sometimes we disagreed with one another, as each person is different, but the following list is made up of common experiences.
Pros
Twin Day becomes a family affair
At the top of the list we have this iconic look (if I may say so myself) — my mom and I twinning, both dressed as Waldo, on Twin Day of Spirit Week. It was fun to walk around campus and have people recognizing that we were dressed the same, and to spot each other and laugh and smile about it. In some ways it can be really fun to have your parent on campus to be goofy with.
Prime parking
Kind of a no-brainer, the second pro is parking in the faculty lot. With limited spots in the main lot and the St. Vincent parking lot a long walk away, the faculty lot is right up by the math building, conveniently avoiding the after-school traffic hazard that the main lot becomes at 3:15p.m. Plus, “It’s always fun to walk into your parents’ class and ask for the car keys,” noted Walsh.
Lounging among faculty
When asked about the special privileges faculty kids enjoy, three noted their access to the faculty lounge, located straight ahead through the main doors of Dant. Some teachers are more lenient of student entry than others, but I have definitely popped in to grab a tea bag or a utensil I forgot to pack in my lunch. Sometimes during my quick pop-ins, I have even been asked to sit down and chat, which leads me right into the fourth pro.
You’ve got back-up
It can be a very useful tool to have someone on campus who knows your teachers and the intricate workings of the institution well and who can stick up for you. “If I’m having issues, I’ll talk to my mom about them, and she’s aggressive about making things better,” reflected Nicholson. This can be an amazing pro, but it really depends on the people and situation. In some ways, it’s easier for our faculty parents to stick up for us with their insider knowledge, but they can also be more hesitant to do so because of the professional lines they may have to cross.
Easy verification
This pro really needs no explaining; there’s someone to easily verify your departure if you sign out. No need to make a fuss and call your parents if you’re unaccounted for, they’re already there!
Mom or dad to the rescue
In the same vein, having a parent on campus means sick days always get worked out. “If your parent has a ‘free [block]’ you can easily get home. If you have an emergency, they’re there. It feels safe,” explained Latendresse. Having her dad on campus offers Latendresse a sense of security.
Back-door foresight
Because we’re faculty kids, our parents have access to information, so many of us are able to know our schedule in advance and see our reports early. This is really a rather superficial pro, as nothing is changed from this knowledge; we simply have the information a bit sooner.
Campus hideaways
For kids who want it, they have a separate space on campus to work, have a moment alone, to spend time with their parent, or simply an extra storage space. Nicholson spends lots of time working in her mom's office, lounging on the couch. Similarly, Herbst spends much of her free time on her mom’s office space couch in Dant. “I go out to lunch with my mom, and I go out of my way to see her,” said Nicholson, adding, “I’m kind of an anomaly.” Easy access to your parent is a perk, plus they’ll buy you lunch.
Faculty and friend
My interviewees responses varied in many regards, but every single person I interviewed cited the relationships they had built with the faculty as one of the biggest impacts of being a faculty kid, and one of the most meaningful parts of their CGS experience.
Having a faculty parent massively impacts your perspective — how you view the faculty, the staff and administrators, and even the student body. You know your teachers in a personal context. Sometimes the relationships are very personal, and they can be much more than our parents’ work colleagues. Faculty can be our parents’ best friends. Walsh, who is currently in Peter Shulman’s “Rise of the Authoritarians” class, has known his teacher for a very long time. “Peter threw my sister’s baby shower,” he recalled. Fourteen years later, Walsh attends his Zoom lectures where he and his classmates discuss the authoritarians of the world under Peter’s guidance.
We as faculty kids are offered a behind the scenes view of the lives of our teachers. “My relationships with other teachers were really good because I understood what happens when they go home,” explained Shulman.
Like Shulman, Sauer knew more of the teachers and staff who [she] normally wouldn’t have known well. “I’d have teachers over to my house,” she said. “I’d meet a lot of people through [my dad] because he’s pretty involved.”
Other faculty kids echoed this sentiment. Okabayashi reflected that as a student he was “a lot more aware of things that they tried to keep away from students — the issues that Catlin was going through.”
Knowing our teachers so well allows us to form incredible connections with them. We see the inner workings of the campus and thus become better, more involved community members.
If she had not been a faculty kid, Shulman reflected, “I wouldn’t have valued my relationships with other teachers as much.” She believes her relationship with her dad set a precedent with other teachers. “I felt more comfortable talking to teachers. They said I was good at reaching out when I needed help and that came from having my dad as a teacher.”
Having my mom as a teacher has, like Shulman, made me more comfortable opening lines of communication with my teachers. Talking to them about issues feels incredibly easy as a result of my close relationship with the faculty, which I owe to my mom.
The tea
There’s not much I can divulge, but multiple interviewees mentioned faculty gossip as a part of their experience as a faculty kid. I think we have all learned to keep what we know to ourselves, and if it will eventually come out, to wait for the information to be publicized. “I remember knowing one of my teachers was going to retire and trying to get everyone to be nice to them, but no one knew. It felt like a responsibility,” reflected Latendresse. Sometimes it can be a challenge to be in the know, but normally it’s rather exciting.
It’s all about the money
The final benefit of being a faculty kid, and the most blatantly obvious, is the tuition remission. The full price of tuition in the 2019-20 school year for a CGS upper schooler was $34,100. For middle schoolers the price was $32,790, for lower schoolers it was $29,880, and for beginning schoolers it was $27,190. Faculty whose children are accepted to CGS receive 70% off that tuition if their parents are full time and 35% for half time. Some amenities also come for free; Sauer, for example, recalled attending ski bus free of charge.
Cons
Associations and separations
It can be hard to be a student on campus where your parent works, particularly if they are a sort of larger-than-life figure. It’s easy to be known as your parent’s child, so some faculty kids have to work hard establishing themselves as an individual. Shulman experienced this sort of association as she came into the US. “Being the youngest, I’m Peter’s daughter and I’m Dash’s sister first,” explained Shulman, “but I came into my own.”
Give me space!
Having your parent be so present in your social life can be a challenge. Sauer described feeling like her dad was “always around” towards the end of high school, which “was sometimes convenient but also more than I wanted as a teenager.” Our parents know everything, from an academic standpoint at least, about your friends and peers. It can be awkward. “It’s tough having your parents having so much power over your friends,” said Walsh. “Not only can they discipline them, but they have power over where they go to college [because they grade them].” The power dynamic between teacher and friendly parent is a tricky one.
Give me more!
Constantly having your parent around can make for some awkward interactions. “When you curse loudly and you turn around and your parent is there, it’s unfortunate,” commented Walsh. There are some situations where you simply don’t want them around. Take dances, for example.
For Latendresse, whose dad was more present in her school life during Middle School (MS), MS dances became a complicated endeavor as all faculty were required to chaperone dances. “Usually he stayed in the basement [of the Barn, where MS dances are held.] Towards the end of the dance during the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ dance, I was slow dancing with somebody in eighth grade and he opened the doors and I was just right there, just looking at him over the shoulder of this boy, trying not to make eye contact.”
Parent and teacher
As one might expect, having your parent as your teacher creates difficulties. While many faculty kids never had their parent as an instructor, many did.
Herbst, who recently starred in the US musical production of the Addams Family, was directed by her mom. “I have a hard time acting professionally,” said Herbst. “I have ADHD,” she explained. “I tend to be pretty spazzy, goofing off around friends. There have been times when we get in the car and she gives me a stern mother talking-to, which is rough.”
Shulman was a student in her dad’s class during her time at CGS. “People thought I had a leg up,” she reflected. She remembers a classmate telling her if they were in the same class and she got a better grade, they would think it was unfair. Many faculty kids experience the assumption of favoritism from skeptical peers, when, in fact, it may be more challenging than less to be a student in your parent’s classroom. The faculty parents are painfully aware of the appearance of bias that in many cases they may come down more critically on their children.
Issues are not only created when kids are graded by their parents, but can also occur among peers. Nicholson described some of her friends opting out of her mom's classes, as they were uncomfortable being taught by her mom because they know their relationship is unfiltered. “Some friends don’t want me to know them academically,” Nicholson explained.
Negative sentiments
It can be really uncomfortable for a student if their parent is disliked by a student. “One specific memory I have from when I was a freshman at a town hall,” recollected Sauer; during town halls, an old CGS tradition, all the teachers would leave, allowing the students to talk about issues. “Someone brought up something about the grading in my dads’ class.” She was briefly uncomfortable but it quickly passed.
Bleeding together
“You can never separate school and home,” remarked Walsh, plainly laying out one of the major cons of being a faculty kid. School conversations are brought home and home conversations are brought to school; there’s no separation. Shulman observed that her relationship with her dad is “heavily discussing academics because [she] associates him with school.” It’s not only the faculty kids who associate their parents with school, but the whole student body, including our friends. They are faculty, after all.
I’ve had a friend tell me they didn’t like coming over to my house because they felt like they were at school. While I understand where they came from, it hurt to realize that I couldn’t be like any other friend whose house they’d go to without a second thought. My situation can sometimes be a complication.
My mom, Ricky King ‘17, and I at the Class of 2017 Graduation. Ricky and I were classmates in my mom’s French class that year and Ricky was one of my brother Zachary’s closest friends (also Class of 2017).
Defining the border between parent and teacher can be tricky. My mom attended my brother’s graduation as a loving, excited mother, but also as a teacher to see her students walk the stage.
Parent-child barriers
It’s hard to put my finger on this particular con, but having a parent as a faculty member at school can create a barrier in the parent-child relationship. There are topics you veer away from that may be too complicated given their two roles. Having a parent be a mandatory reporter, and someone who has so much power in your peers’ academics lives, especially if they are their teacher, makes certain conversations complicated. “We’ve had people in our class sent to rehab and arrested,” Walsh explained, “and I’ve had to have conversations about that with my parents.” Faculty parents are given the opportunity to get to know their child well in a manner most parents don’t ever get to — seeing them in their school environment — but it also means it’s harder for their child to share important personal experiences because of their position of power within the CGS institution, particularly if maintaining confidentiality is a priority.
High expectations
A definite con of being a faculty kid is the weight of the responsibility we bear. Having our parents work at CGS means we, too, are representatives of the school, and are thus expected to be good, responsible, high-achieving, rule-following community members. If there are missteps, they feel much more severe. “My parents had very heightened expectations of me … if I got in trouble at school, it came down a lot harder because there was no arguing; my parents weren’t going to argue with the school,” explained Shulman.
Many other interviewees expressed feeling the same way. Expectations are elevated for faculty kids. Getting in trouble means we broke the rules it’s our parents' job to enforce. Not only is there an expectation around rule following, but also that we will be good students. Nicholson believes that being a faculty kid made her a better student. “Because [my mom] is a teacher, there’s an expectation that I want to work hard. I’m in an environment at home where both parents are academics so there’s that type of pressure.” As the children of academic parents, expectations of academic pursuits tend to be raised, but then again, so is our access to academic resources at home.
Parties and the handbook
Parties are a gray area for many faculty kids. Most faculty kids don’t end up hosting parties, and there’s a reason. For many faculty kids, the party scene is a point of contention as our parents are mandatory reporters, yet parties are for many a quintessential part of their high school social experience. One interviewee recalled finding herself in a sticky situation at a dance after a bit of pre-partying, face to face with a parent. It’s complicated for parents to take one stance at school professionally but perhaps a different one at home as a parent when those worlds collide.
Lost hours
Faculty kids tend to spend a lot of long hours on campus, waiting around. This speaks to the larger issue of how much time faculty are expected to be on campus, between their after-school meetings, before-school faculty meetings on Wednesdays, back-to-school night, and the tremendously long days of parent-teacher conferences. We as faculty kids notice these hours because we end up on campus, doing homework or watching a show as the campus becomes blanketed in darkness. When my mom was the Mock Trial advisor, I remember walking to the car in complete darkness on several occasions.
Walsh recalled being on campus, bored, “for hours and hours” during parent-teacher conferences. As he mentioned it, I was reminded of the fact that since the “late start Wednesdays” began, to accommodate the early faculty meetings, my best friend Latendresse and I have made plans to eat a panini and work at St. Vincent’s, as we both arrive on campus by 7:30 a.m. and have until 9:00 a.m. before classes begin. Meanwhile, many of our peers are having leisurely wake-ups at home. There is a loss in all the time we spend on campus.
As faculty kids, we experience both loss and gain. The experience is a give and take, and a unique one.