They may be given special treatment in class or when being disciplined, which makes the other students feel unfairly treated. Their relative may not be able to act professional around them, constantly making it clear they're related and calling them nicknames like "sweetie" in front of their friends, bullies, or, heaven forbid, their crush. Even if the relative is relaxed about the situation, teachers and other school staff often have a reputation of being generally uncool, and the kid won't want that association.
In Real Life, schools will usually make a point to avoid this because of worries over favoritism and professionalism (and concern for the child's social development). If a teacher has a kid in the school, they will almost always make sure to place that student in a different class. The exception is if there is only one teacher in the school for that class, which is common for non-core subjects such as Gym, Art, or Music class.
Compare Homeschooled Kids, which is about parents teaching their kids at home. See also Teachers Out of School.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Yandere Kanojo, main character Reina is a Japanese Delinquent, so she's reluctant to reveal that her father is a math teacher in her school. Not only that, he also developed an image of a Sadist Teacher, despite actually being a Shrinking Violet with a Face of a Thug. She preemptively told him not to talk to her during school.
- In Magical Sempai, Sempai's sister, Sister is Assistant's homeroom teacher and is a complete gadfly towards her and acts fairly immature, which greatly embarrasses Sempai. The Gadfly behavior is disruptive enough that Sister usually gets dragged away by another teacher for causing a scene.
- A variation happens in A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, Koyuki Honami's father is a teacher at her school, but while she isn't embarrassed to have him as a teacher, being the daughter of a teacher means that she's under more pressure to behave herself than mot students are.
- Tamamo-chan’s a Fox!: In volume 2 Tamamo's big sister Tenko gets a job as her homeroom teacher, and almost immediately starts singling her out for hard questions.
Fan Works
- In the Discworld fics of A.A. Pessimal, set in the Assassins' Guild school, not even the Assassins are immune from this and issues arising are explored via the student society called The RATS
- Relatives of Assassin Teachers and Staff. This group is officially sanctioned as a means for pupils in this unenviable position to get together and vent. Prominent members include Rupert Mericet, a senior boy whose distant relative is the feared alchemy master. In self-defence, Rupert pointedly tries not to be too good at Alchemy. He does, however, have the family tendency to mordant sarcasm.
- The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H.: Inverted with Simon. Yes, his father is the principal of Springfield Elementary, but he isn't embarrassed by that fact; in fact, he wears it like a badge of honor, and uses his position as the principal's son to get what he wants from other students and even the teachers. And even though Principal Skinner is a Doting Parent, Simon is not an Affection-Hating Kid by any means (quite the opposite, really), so he revels in his father's open praise of him rather than rejecting it. Still, Hikaru brings up how atypical Simon is for relishing in his father's affections, saying that if his dad worked at the school, he'd be embarrassed by it.
- In the epilogue of Son of the Sannin, Tenten has become a teacher at the ninja academy (rather than the owner of a weapon shop like in canon). Needless to say, her eldest daughter did not enjoy being in her class at all.
Films — Live-Action
- Discussed in the movie Cellular. The teacher's son is worried that he'll have to have her as a teacher when he attends her school next year; she thinks it would be a splendid idea.
- In the 1968 film Candy (based on a parody semi-pornographic book which was itself loosely based on Candide), Candy's father is also one of her teachers. In an inversion, he's the one embarrassed by her, even though the wacky hijinks that happen to her aren't her fault.
- Beca's dad in Pitch Perfect is a professor at her college, and she denies the relation and wants nothing to do with him for the most part.
- King Of Fighters: Takuma is the master and teacher at his Kyokugen Karate dojo, which his children attend. And when he's not being stern, he's quite the Bumbling Dad who tends to embarrass his daughter.
- In Goosebumps (2015), the main character is embarrassed about being the vice-principal's son.
- In When Evil Calls, Samantha is the daughter of the principal and receives a lot of teasing and bullying because of it; including from her crush.
Literature
- Animorphs: Marco's dad eventually remarries a math teacher at Marco's school (fortunately he's not in her class). "you're not my real mom" drama is avoided for the most part, but the fact that he can't exactly tell his dad that his mother is still alive, just serving as host body to a Puppeteer Parasite plays a toll on his psyche. When his parents are reunited, Marco chooses to tell his dad this new wife might have been a Controller from the start.
- In The Princess Diaries, Mia's mum starts dating her geometry teacher, and eventually marries him, making him her stepdad. In something of a reversal, she initially finds it most embarrassing seeing him around the house, as it feels very weird to see a teacher comfortable in her home space like that, but it certainly makes things more awkward at school, too.
- One Ricky Rapper book has Serena accidentally become a substitute teacher at her nephew Ricky's school. She doesn't tell anyone that she's his aunt at his insistence, but does show videos of Ricky as a naked baby to the class, which leads to Ricky skipping school for a while.
- In Unforgiven by Lauren Kate, Lilith's mother does a lot of odd jobs, including working as a substitute teacher in her daughter's high school. Since she does not want to be seen favoring her daughter, she is particularly strict toward Lilith, which leads to several embarrassing situations.
Live-Action TV
- In one episode of A.N.T. Farm, Chyna and Cameron's grandmother becomes prinicpal of Webster High after Chyna tricked Principal Skidmore into retiring. The very first thing she does as principal is show their baby pictures to all of their classmates. It gets so bad Chyna is desperate to get Skidmore to come back.
- In Our Miss Brooks, Harriet Conklin's father is the school principal; to make it worse he's particularly unliked by the student body. Harriet's embarassed by the more unprincipled facets of Mr. Conklin's tenure. For example, in "Home Cooked Meal" she's mortified that instead of buying a home freezer, Mr. Conklin is secretly hiding the family's meat supply in the school cafeteria freezer.
- In The Brothers GarcÃa episode "The Sub", Ray becomes a substitute teacher in Carlos and George's class. They simply pretend they're not related until Ray, out of habit, calls Carlos "Mijo" during class.
- An episode of Drake & Josh has Josh being hired to teach Megan's 3rd grade class. He's so tough on the students that they direct their anger towards Megan just because he's her brother.
- There's an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where Will gets Vivian to teach a Black History class at Bel-Air Academy, and there's a lot of this. Carlton assumes that he's going to get preferential treatment because the teacher is his mother, but it backfires when, at the beginning of the first class meeting, he calls her "Mommy" and she insists that he calls her "Mrs. Banks". The second they leave the classroom, though, she gets on him to straighten out his appearance. Will and Carlton goof off in class and don't take it seriously, so Vivian assign each of them to write a black history essay. Will and Carlton complain to Phillip that she's coming down too hard on them, all while she leads their classmates in Negro spirituals and they're eating it up. Vivian later explains that she expected the two students who are Black and asked for the class to take it the most seriously and wanted them to take history itself seriously.
- Subversion: Full House had an episode in which Joey (who was Danny's best friend growing up and is really only viewed by the family as an uncle to his children) was hired to teach for Michelle's class. She and her friends expected him to let them play and goof around in class, the way he plays and goofs around at home. However, he insisted on acting very professional and enforcing discipline in the classroom (on top of Michelle not consistently being shown being disciplined to begin with), which led to Michelle getting angry because he wasn't acting silly here and giving her preferential treatment.
- Hannah Montana: When their "Mamaw" becomes the school's new lunch-lady, Miley and Jackson find her to be a very humiliating presence; not only does she make it abundantly clear that they're her grandchildren, she also puts them in embarrassing situations, such as by giving them childish, musical backpacks. Miley and Jackson resort to getting her fired to stop the bullying they receive.
- Teen Wolf:
- New Transfer Student Kira has trouble making friends in Beacon Hills High because her father is the history teacher, and often embarrasses her without meaning to.
- Subverted with Lydia — she's surprised at seeing her mother teach at the school, but is mostly cool with it.
- On Girl Meets World, Corey is both Riley's history teacher and father. He goes out of his way to be a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad and ward off the budding romantic relationship between Riley and her crush, among other things Riley finds embarrassing.
- On Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Nicole attends a school where both her mother, Geneva and her older cousin, Mark Cooper, work. When Nicole has trouble with bullies, both Mark and Geneva step in. Mark's interference results in embarrassment but Geneva delivers the epic "Who's been messing with my baby?!" speech that sends the bully running for the hills.
- On the fourth season of The Goldbergs, Beverly becomes a substitute teacher, much to the horror of her kids, who already get enough of her smothering at home.
- Mr. Sweet, the science teacher and principal on House of Anubis, happens to be Eddie's father. With Eddie being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold bad-boy from America and Mr. Sweet being known primarily for his dorky nature, Eddie was all too eager to keep their relationship a secret. When Patricia accidentally reveals the truth to the whole school, The Freelance Shame Squad that greets them proves Eddie's fears correct, though the embarrassment eventually subsides as the two grow closer.
- In the Small Wonder episode "My Mom the Teacher", Joan becomes the substitute teacher for Jamie's class. In this and later episodes, Jamie wreaks all the havoc he can at school when his mother is teaching, but she's just as strict in the classroom as she is at home.
- So Awkward: One episode starts with Lily being horrified to discover that her amazingly embarrassing mum is the new substitute teacher, and will be teaching on 'the Psychology of the Teenage Girl' by reading from Lily's diary, Fortunately (?) this turns out to be another nightmare caused by Lily being Asleep in Class.
- Subverted on Everything Sucks!, Kate Messner's father Ken is the school's principal who tends to give Kate the same treatment she's given at home, which causes humiliation for Kate.
- In one episode of That's So Raven, Raven's mother becomes her class's substitute teacher. Though everyone else in her class actually thinks she's really cool and fun, Raven finds her presence humiliating, trying not to let her mother know how it's affecting her. At the end, her mother overhears her telling Chelsea and Eddie about how humiliated she feels, but though she's hurt, she understands that as a teenager, Raven can't have her mother getting in her way during school.
- Red Dwarf: According to "The Beginning", the lecturer during Rimmer's time at the Io Polytechnic was his father, which Rimmer is embarrassed by. Of course, its not helped by the fact that he had legally emancipated himself from them by this point.
Video Games
- In Tales of Symphonia, Raine, Genis's older sister, teaches Genis's class in Iselia, a small village with a schoolhouse. While he is embarrassed by her sometimes, it's never within the actual school setting, since school has no ruins for her to obsess over or cooking to ruin.
Visual Novels
- Fate/stay night inverts this. Taiga (Shiro's legal guardian/aunt figure/moocher) teaches his class at school, but she's the one who gets embarrassed when they act too familiarly there. Shiro- not being your average teenager- is pretty chill about it.
- Played with in Dream Daddy. Hugo is the English teacher at the local school and doesn't go out of his way to embarrass his son Ernest, but Ernest resents him anyway because being both a single father and teacher means Hugo has to be the ultimate authority figure in his life.
Web Animation
- Early into DC Super Hero Girls, Barbara Gordon decided to start attending Superhero High as Batgirl. Her father, Jim Gordon, teaches classes at the school. Babs doesn't seem too embarrassed by her dad, however, he does call her cutesy pet-names and tries to coddle her despite her protesting.
Webcomics
- Played with in one strip of Dumb_RWBY that was set before the events of the series proper. Ruby is actually excited at having a class taught by her uncle Qrow right up until he crashes into the room on the first day of school completely plastered and goes off on a drunken rant on the uselessness of school compared to real life experience before passing out. Ruby is appropriately mortified, but all the other kids immediately start gushing over how cool his is.
- In El Goonish Shive, one of the teachers at Moperville South high school is the father of one of the main characters. She avoids him whenever possible after this fact is revealed. This is made extra-awkward by the fact that neither of them knew about the relationship for most of their time together (she's the child of a one-night stand).
- Monster Pulse: The main character's mother is her teacher. She doesn't do anything in front of the class to embarrass her daughter, but her daughter is still embarrassed and doesn't participate in class for fear of being called a teacher's pet.
- In Housepets!, Miles gets a job as a substitute teacher at the school his cubs are sent to.
Miles: Go get'em, Rockstar! Study hard!
Student: So is Mr. The Wolf, like, your dad?
Rockstar Hawk: No, total coincidence.
Web Videos
- In the SuperMarioLogan episode, "Substitute Teacher!", Judy becomes the substitute teacher for Bowser Junior's class when Jackie Chu becomes sick. She embarrasses Cody to no end, by telling him that he forgot to take his medication that keeps him from wetting his pants, revealing their surname (Nutkiss), making him read a note Junior passed him in front of the class, and teaching the class about The Nazi Cheeseburger and marine biology (with all of her knowledge of the latter being from SpongeBob SquarePants).
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: In "The PTA Disbands", Marge briefly became Bart's substitute teacher after he drove all the other subs away, and since Marge is Bart's mother he can't pull the pranks on her like he did with the other subs. She calls him "sweetie" in class.
- In Martha Speaks, T.D. is embarrassed by the fact that his mother is vice-principal at his school. This is odd, as he usually never gets embarrassed.
- Family Guy: Subverted, Meg expects this to happen when Peter becomes the principal. However, this changes when he stands up to her bullies. She then decides to take advantage of his paternal instinct and uses him to get revenge on other students who've wronged her.
- Inverted in "Connie's Celica", Lois becomes Meg's substitute music teacher, in this case, Connie insults Lois and makes her the target of humiliation.
- American Dad!: Subverted in an episode where Francine becomes the school's guidance counselor. Steve notes how awkward it will be to go to his mom for counseling, but Francine tells him she's fine with it. This causes Steve to put aside his reservations and ask her for advice.
- Leonard from Teacher's Pet has his mother as one of his teachers, which of course causes him no end of embarrassment.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "How to Sink a Sub", Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen's parents become substitute teachers after Jimmy sends the real teachers into space. At one point, Jimmy's mom shows the class his baby pictures.
- Pixel Pinkie: Nina's mum Fern, a New-Age Retro Hippie, becomes this when she substitutes for a teacher that Nina accidentally wished for to be on vacation in one episode.
- DC Super Hero Girls (2019): "#AcceptNoSubstitute" has James Gordon become a substitute teacher at Metropolis High and embarrass his daughter Barbara with things like showing humiliating photos and home movies of when Barbara was a baby and announcing over the intercom that goulash makes Barbara gassy.
