‘Hey, Steveline’: Meet a dad-and-daughter Philly teaching duo

When Abby Steveline was growing up, she’d sometimes spend days off from school and at her dad’s workplace, Furness High in South Philly.

Chris Steveline was a popular math teacher, the kind of educator students remember. Abby liked sitting in classrooms, testing out a camera that took student photos, snapping her own photo, and then blowing it up on the computer screen while the adults laughed.

“It was super cool,” she said.

She never dreamed that someday she’d be her dad’s colleague, but that’s her new reality.

Last month, Ms. Steveline joined the Furness faculty as a biology teacher, working alongside Mr. Steveline, the administrative jack-of-all trades, who is technology coordinator and works to make sure all Furness students are on a pathway to graduation.

Chris Steveline is a product of the Philadelphia School District. He graduated from Parkway West, back when it was still a school without walls on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

Many people in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood attended West Catholic, and his brother did, too, but his parents didn’t have enough money to send Chris there as well.

“Ninth grade wasn’t my best,” said Chris Steveline. “I was a little angry.”

But Steveline’s teachers didn’t write him off, and things smoothed out for him. Parkway prized student-teacher relationships, and that was a lesson for him.

“Having those teachers deal with my crazy self — the patience and stick-with-it-ness they showed, that got the wheels spinning a little bit as to how I could give back,” he said.

Steveline worked for a time in the hotel industry, but eventually, he made it to where he was supposed to be: in a classroom, specifically a math room at Furness, on South Third Street between Mifflin and McKean.

Furness is a tight-knit, diverse neighborhood high school known for educators who stick around and students who feel safe and respected. More than half of the school’s pupils are English language learners from countries all over the world. Steveline never wanted to work anywhere else.

“They’re going to have to burn me out of here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Abby Steveline was a toddler when her father came to Furness. She said that for a time, she wanted to become a teacher, then cycled through other career ambitions, including a scientist and a physical therapist. But eventually, she came back around: At Kutztown University, she studied biology, secondary education, and English as a second language. She graduated in May.

This past spring, Abby Steveline saw a social media post during her lunch break when she was student teaching at Muhlenberg High School in Berks County: Furness High needed a biology teacher for the 2024-25 school year. She emailed the principal right away.

Abby Steveline, who attended Upper Darby High School, imagined herself teaching at a school like Furness.

“I’ve heard so much over the years about so many good people, so many good experiences,” she said. “I wanted to be a part of a building where everybody has everybody, you never struggle alone. Everyone is supportive here, and everyone stays for 20 or 30 years. There’s so much diversity within teachers themselves. It’s refreshing, and something that I really wanted to be a part of.”

Chris Steveline had no idea the school was even looking for a biology teacher, but when he heard, he walked into the office.

“I said, ‘My kid applied, and you’re going to hire her, right?’ They laughed,” he said. (Abby Steveline had to go through the district’s process and interview like everyone else, but amid a national teaching shortage where science teachers are in particularly short supply, it’s no surprise she had her pick of schools.)

To say he is thrilled to work with his daughter is an understatement.

“It’s the greatest thing ever; it’s awesome — I come in smiling every day now,” he said. “All of our kids want to come to school to learn. The teachers here are just phenomenal. They work so hard, and they work together. We have a really good ESL program here. It’s a great community to help a brand-new teacher learn and grow.”

The office phone rang.

“This is Mr. Steveline, how can I help you?” he asked.

There was a pause. Abby Steveline isn’t quite sure what to call her father at work, so she mostly defaults to not calling him anything.

“Hey, what’s up,” she said finally, letting her familiar voice identify to her father who was calling. She had students who had Chromebook issues. No problem: He had her send them down to his office so he could troubleshoot in person.

But, ever a dad, Chris Steveline couldn’t let that story go as they reminisced about it a few days later. School phones can be complicated to get used to, and he was going to needle his kid.

“Remember, I had to help you figure out how to use the phone?” he said to his daughter.

She smiled, ducked her head; being a 22-year-old who lives and works with your dad at your first real job takes some getting used to. They’re carpool buddies now, Chris Steveline gleefully says, but sometimes they bicker over what to play on the radio.

“It’s weird; I’ll see him in the hallway, and I don’t know what to say,” she said.

He refers to all his colleagues by their last names. When she walked past him one day, he kept it up.

“Hey, Steveline,” he said, then paused. “That was weird.”

The school year is young, but Abby Steveline so far loves teaching, the thrill of her own classroom, her students’ energy and enthusiasm. And so far, the students who have figured out that their biology teacher’s dad is that Mr. Steveline are delighted, just like she is.

“The kids put two and two together. They say, ‘Oh, my gosh, your dad’s here,’” she said. “It’s odd, but it’s also nice and fun.”