By: Brendan Massoud ’17 and Alex Spadacenta ’17

Exceeding involvement in students’ academic and standardized-testing lives, deemed ‘helicopter parenting,’ is a phenomenon which has just recently made its way onto the national stage. The behavior of some parents regarding this year’s PSAT10 is the most recent example of this parenting style.
Continuing Education was forced to precautionarily hire a security guard for the March 10 administration of the PSAT10, the version of the PSAT which is offered to sophomores.
Ellen Israel, the director of Continuing Ed., hired the guards to oversee the test after receiving aggressive calls from parents demanding that their child take the test, despite missing the registration deadline. Although no one was in physical danger, security guard Ron Palmer and Horace Lewis, SHS head custodian, were present in order to ensure that no parents disrupted the strict procedures and regulations set forth by the College Board.
Israel explained that some of the emails and calls she received after the deadline were impolite and that the parent interactions were not necessarily helpful. “I would prefer that [the parents] teach their students to advocate for themselves,” Israel said.
In the Staples community, a number of teachers have found parent interjections in their child’s academic life to be more harmful than helpful.
Science teacher Trema Voytek understands that parents are trying to protect their children, however she feels that helicopter parents in high school could potentially hurt the child later in life by not allowing students to take responsibility or make mistakes.
“[Parents] end up doing everything for their children and the kids don’t learn how to be responsible,” Voytek said. “When they get out in the real world, if they’d never failed, when they do fail, they’re devastated.”
English teacher Brian Tippy agreed that parents can often lose sight of boundaries, but believes this instinct stems from intentions which are in the right place.
“Sometimes you get people who are so desperate to protect their kids that they forget that some consequences are really important,” he said.
Robert Shamberg, a social studies teacher, said that some parents ask him to refrain from telling their child they have contacted their teacher.
Izzy Baildon ’17 noticed that her parents check her grades on Home Access Center more than she does. “My mom is completely obsessed with it,” she said. Baildon also said that her parents will contact her teachers, but only with her permission.
“The college process is so anxiety-provoking at this point that it’s hard not to get caught up in that anxiety,” Israel said regarding parent behavior.
Israel has dealt with parents who are over enthusiastic about their children getting ahead while running Continuing Ed classes. One class offered is a robotics class for kindergarteners, which sometimes gives the parents of the children enrolled the idea that this could be a potential major in college, as she explained.
“It can sometimes be difficult for parents to separate the idea that their kid might want to do robotics for fun when they’re in kindergarten, but might have absolutely no interest in computer science whatsoever,” she said.
Alan Jolley, a math teacher, administers the PSAT and SAT tests at Staples, and feels that the PSAT incident was a learning experience for parents. He “wish[es] these parents would understand that this was a practice [exam],” and that they have learned what to do when the real SAT comes around.
As for how the Staples community is reacting to the existence of helicopter parents, the school is attempting to increase student responsibility and encourages students to initiate contact with teachers.
“I think there are a number of ways that we could encourage more self-reliance and more taking responsibility,” Tippy said. “A good example is we are reworking the academic honesty policy.”
As said by Baildon, parents cause pressure by emphasizing the importance of As. This, in Tippy’s opinion, is a driving factor in the issue of academic dishonesty. AP students, Tippy felt, were at least as likely to cheat as their peers, purely because they “just can’t turn in a C paper.”
Voytek believes that the culture at Staples in recent years has created the assumption that getting a C, which is passing, is unacceptable. “[Parents are] always trying to protect them from getting a C,” Voytek said. “A ‘C’ never killed anyone years before.”
Yet, Tippy went on to explain that student anxiety is built not only on parents, but also from the whole town and society in which we live. “There is a whole cultural phenomenon in this town, in lots of towns,” he said, “that puts measurements of success ahead of actual success.”