Just like students, teachers have others they work closely with. Elizabeth Delgado and Jaime Oshel are a pair of PE teachers who have grown close over the years. 

“She just gets me. She just knows when I’m having a good day or bad day. It’s like a marriage kind of. When I can only give 30% she is my other 70% and vice versa,” Oshel said. 

The connection between the two started when Delgado first came to the high school seven years ago.

“I feel like [our friendship] helped me a lot because she was my mentor teacher my first year here, so I feel like I owe her everything I know. I was a brand new teacher and I didn’t know anything about the school or the culture. I was new to the town and she showed me the ropes. A lot of my stuff is because I took her policies. I learned a lot from her,” Delgado said. 

Delgado and Oshel work in the same department at the school, so working together to create new ideas or rules is something they do often.

“She just knows where I stand on stuff and we bounce ideas off each other,” Oshel said.

Friendships between teachers can have many positive effects. Along with learning from each other, having a partner can make dreary days better. 

“It makes the environment more enjoyable when you have a friend that you can joke with and see in the hall. It’s another reason you want to stay. Obviously you have all the reasons you want to keep coming back, but you spend so much of your time at school everyday so if you don’t have friends it makes it hard. I know I can count on her,” Delgado said. 

These friendships are just as important as the friendships students form with their peers. 

“I think it does affect [students] because they get to see positive, healthy friendships and work relationships so that gives them an example to look at and surrounds themselves with good people that lift you up and make you better,” Delgado said. 

Whether it is staff members, teachers, or students, friendships are what makes up the connections within the high school.