Junior Tyler Torrens couldn’t simply sit and watch as his father and MAP US History teacher Matt Torrens fabricated stories about his childhood in front of his classmates.

In Torrens’ supposed story, Tyler ate worms and dirt when he was little.

“I didn’t eat anything like that,” Tyler said. “Maybe I tried like an ant or something when I was 5 and didn’t realize, but I didn’t eat any of that stuff because it’s really gross.”

Having been both a student and teaching assistant in his dad’s classes, Tyler has learned how to handle having a parent at his school. But for his younger brother, freshman Drew Torrens, attending SHS has been a mix of pushing away from his father but also getting closer, as he often hangs out in his dad’s room with his friends. Drew recalled a time when one of his friends put on Torrens’s Forrest Gump boots and walked around in them.

“It’s fun; I mean not fun to see your dad when you’re walking down the hallway, but it’s fun to have a place to go with your friends and to hang out sometimes,” Drew said.

Tyler also recounts similar experiences with his dad pointing him out around school.

“If he sees you from across the hall, he’ll come yelling ‘Tyler, Tyler, Tyler’ and he’s done that before,” he said.

For Tyler, it was more difficult in freshman year to walk around and see his dad.

“I think the hardest thing for me is, what do I call him? Do I call him Mr. Torrens, Dad, Padre? Anything I call him is really weird,” he said.

The family starts their long day together at 6:30 a.m., which is when they try to leave their home in San Jose. After a church class, they arrive at school around 7:45. With varying schedules after school and depending on the sport season, the Torrens family sometimes finds it hard to fit everyone’s schedule together.

Sydney Torrens, the eldest of the four Torrens siblings, graduated in 2015. She was originally drawn to Saratoga High for its Media Arts Program, and Tyler and Drew followed suit. Torrens is currently unsure if Landon, his youngest child who is currently in fifth grade, will attend the school as well.

According to Torrens, having his children at the school has changed his outlook on student life here.

“I’m a better teacher now that my kids have gone through school here, knowing what goes on outside of my class,” Torrens said. “I’ve realized the challenge of group projects, and what it means for kids to be under peer pressure, and I also see the frustration they sometimes feel.”

He has also gotten more involved and knowledgeable about school activities due to his children’s influence. Torrens sometimes adjusts assignments and test schedules based on activities such as Bombay in the Bay and sports games.

In one case, Tyler informed Torrens of a test conflicting  with one of English 11 teacher Natasha Ritchie’s tests, which would affect many of the juniors in Torrens’s class. After consulting with Ritchie, Torrens decided to postpone his test.

“I was so excited when I found out he had changed it, because I thought ‘Wow, I could do anything now! I could postpone any test; I could postpone the final!’ ” Tyler joked. “No, I felt very accomplished — it was nice.”

Classmates, stressed about the prospective of taking multiple tests on one day, thanked Tyler over Snapchat, who said it felt “nice to help some people.”

In addition to fact-checking his dad’s personal stories and notifying him of test conflicts, Tyler has also gained a perspective on the lives of teachers outside of school by experiencing it first hand.

“I never really knew what teachers had to go through — all the grading and the homework — until I started seeing him stay up until 1 in the morning getting our presentation ready for the next day,” Tyler said.