There are many teachers a student will come into contact with throughout their lives, and within the community of a school, having a parent be one of those teachers is a unique experience for both the parent and the child.

Junior Jack Moran is one of the multiple students at North that has a parent working in the school. Michael Moran is a teacher in the Special Education department of Grayslake North, and also Jack Moran’s father.

“For the most part, he’s an assistant teacher for students with learning disabilities, not emotional problems, but students who have trouble focusing. I believe he’s been teaching for around 14 years, but he only started teaching at North my freshman year, so around three years now,” Moran said.

At first, Moran dreaded the idea of having his father work at the same school; however, he quickly got accustomed to it.

“At first I thought going into high school with my dad teaching there was the worst possible scenario, then again I was an immature eighth- grade boy. But honestly once I got the feel for high school, it really wasn’t that bad. I mean I don’t have any classes with him, but just knowing my dad’s around is definitely a positive,” Moran said.

Overall, Moran hasn’t felt a huge impact on his everyday life. His father is able to be another member of the North community he can depend on.

“There are going to obviously be some differences between having your parent work at the school and not having them work at the school. For some people, it means they have an extra person to talk to when something’s wrong or anything like that. For me, personally, I feel like the only difference though is just having and knowing that he’s in the environment, and if I ever need him, well, he’s there. Most of the time I’m pretty independent, so basically just the fact [of] having him around in the community is by far one of the biggest differences for me,” Moran said.