Appreciating Your Childrens' Teachers
for the Holidays

Even though teachers get the whole summer off, I still couldn't trade places with one. I have the utmost respect for anyone who can spend an entire day with 20 kids or more, taking a break every few minutes from copying cursive letter W's in order to stop this one from biting the eraser off that one's pencil. Anyone who can keep from freaking out when 9-year-old Annie corrects even the adults, or when 7-year-old Simon is drawing his ninetieth picture of Bullwinkle on the paper where his spelling test is supposed to be, deserves a present!

I love my children more than anything, but usually after an entire weekend with all three of them and no break, I'm either ready for a large margarita or Monday morning when I can happily send my older two back to school. Because I recognize how difficult it must be to handle seven times the number of children I do for six straight hours every day, while managing to teach them a few things, I find it important to show appreciation to the kids' teachers every year during the holidays.

Whether it's a way to say thank-you, or just a suck-up because you hope she won't notice your daughter's diorama got partially chewed by the dog, here are some ideas to help your family inexpensively treat the teachers in your life this holiday season. To help us out in this regard, I asked some teachers for their input.

Teachers do get a lot of presents from their students at holiday time, and many times after they've been teaching for several years, the stuff starts to pile up. The teachers I contacted said they tend to get WAY too many coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments, candles, vases, and other knick-knacks. Only one teacher admitted to later re-gifting some of these items, and I respected her honesty. Answers varied depending on how long the teacher has been teaching; for example, a newer teacher may not have gotten way too much of anything yet, where a more tenured one may have decades' worth of these presents. The message was clear, though, household items, which may not be as personal, are appreciated but at some point a teacher's home runs out of room.

So, what kinds of gifts might your family get a teacher that you can be sure they'll use and appreciate? Gift certificates to ice cream stores, grocery stores, restaurants, teachers' supply stores like Holcomb's Know Place, movie passes topped the list. According to one teacher, it doesn't even matter what amount the gift certificate is, because every little bit helps. The teachers I spoke with have received gift certificates in amounts ranging from 50 cents to 50 dollars, but appreciated and used everything they got! Inexpensive items that teachers can use in their classrooms include stickers, books, pads of sticky-notes, boxes of Kleenex, snacks, boxes of pencils or pens.

What unusual gifts have teachers gotten? Anything from an amaryllis bulb, to an African scarf, to a musical, electronic tree ornament that never shut up and is, twenty-five years later, still something the whole family laughs at.

The most appreciated gifts of all though, are homemade, especially cards and letters from the children. More than one tenured teacher has kept these cards for years because they remind her of the lives she's touched. One former teacher keeps a large box in her basement full of this memorabilia and looks at it whenever she's feeling blue. "You think about these kids and remember something funny they might have said or done, that you hadn't thought of in years, and sometimes you laugh until you cry. That's the stuff that's gonna last."

There's no doubt about it, teachers appreciate it, no matter how they're remembered at holiday time, and your family doesn't have to spend big bucks to demonstrate your thanks. Involve your child in the gift's selection and include a written letter from him/her, or make your child central to the gift's manufacture. Keep it simple but personal, both in terms of your child and in terms of the teacher who will receive the gift. The internal reward to your child, in teaching him/her how to make gift-giving matter instead of creating an empty exercise in commercialism, may matter just as much to your family as it does to your child's teacher.

~Heidi McDonald

Heidi McDonald is a part-time freelance writer who works full-time and lives with her husband, two children and a spastic beagle.  Heidi's work has appeared in numerous periodicals, over radio airwaves, and on the internet.