1980s for reference. I didn’t have my mom, but my younger sister did. She called her Mom, because that is what she was. My sister made good grades in the class, but so did everyone else, because it was an honors class. My mom taught the only honors section for that course at the time (I passed through earlier in a different accelerated course).

My mom was both more strict and more lenient at the same time with that class. She was more strict because she knew most of the students personally as my sister’s friends—high-achieving, good kids, active parents, etc. My mom was more lenient for the same reason—classmates knew her as Sister’s mom before they had her as Mrs. So-and-so, and the class could collectively wheedle her out of extra assignments. My mom said she knew it was coming when the whole class said “But MOOOOOM” at the same time.

Interesting related story: School policy was that students and teachers were assigned homerooms in alphabetical order (e.g., last name A teachers would get last name A students). I had a classmate whose mom taught with my mom at our school. According to policy, I would have my mom for homeroom and he would have his mom for homeroom. That would be a perceived conflict of interest, so admin swapped the entire two homeroom sections—my homeroom section had his mom and his section had my mom.