Teacher Appreciation

                         Teachers don't teach to have a job. It is a very low paying, emotional exhausting career with long hours. It is not a thankless job, because the moment that you see the lesson you are teaching click with a child, that is your thanks.
                         Teacher Appreciation Week is the first full week in May.When I was teaching in a Kindergarten classroom, as an Instruction Assistant, I always felt very loved during Teacher Appreciation week. I was lucky that the PTO of the school where I worked promoted it. They came up with fun themed days that made it easy for families to show their appreciation to the teachers. For example bring a flower for your teacher, and by the end of the day you had a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Or bring a fruit for your teacher, and teachers would have a nice fruit basket by the end of the day. They also had school supplies day, sweets day, make a card for you teacher day, etc. The best gifts were always the ones that were handmade. Over the years I received a cross-stitched Christmas ornament, child decorated planters, vases, refrigerator magnets, candles, coffee mugs, and many other things. One of the best gifts I ever received was a beautiful handmade lanyard that a student's grandmother made for me. I was heart broken when I broke it over the summer, but the next year she made me another one when she found out. Even though her granddaughter was no longer in my class.  I still have every gift I ever got from my students that wasn't perishable.
                     I always try to do something nice for my kids teachers, because I know the sacrifice that it is to be a teacher. The school they are in now doesn't promote it the way their old school did, so I wanted to be extra sure to do something nice for them. I don't have a lot of money to spend and the older they get the more teachers they have each year. This year my son is in middle school so he has 7 teachers. My daughter is only in 5th grade, but she still has 4 teachers (classroom, choir, band, and a student teacher). So I have to get creative in showing my appreciation of the time they spend with my child.
                    Sometimes I make baked goods for everyone. I bought a mini loaf pan a couple years ago just for this purpose. With it one batch of bread can make 9 mini loaves of bread. We usually give these to all the teachers at Christmas time.
                   This year I saw a really fun gift idea on Pinterest. It is called a Teacher's Survival Kit. It is a basket full of many everyday items with a note enclosed that relates them to teaching. The one on Pinterest had a full pack of each item in the basket, but times 11 teachers would have been out of my budget. So I got a pack or two of everything and split it between the baskets. This is what the list looks like:


 

 

It isn't much, but I know that it will show the teachers that I appreciate their hard work.