Before I get into this it is worth saying how grateful I am to those parents and children who choose to give me a gift at Christmas and the end of the Summer term. I really appreciate being appreciated. I love my job, and get huge reward and satisfaction from spending my days with some awesome children and to get gifts along the way is a real bonus.
Receiving presents is not something I take for granted and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a number of very generous parents.
The aim of this post is to offer some top tips and golden rules for parents who wish to show their children’s teachers just how much they appreciate them by getting them a gift. A gift they will actually like. If you are going to spend money on someone, it might as well be something wanted.
DO…
1) …give consumables. Chocolates, biscuits, toffees, sweets, alcohol… The last one is particularly important!
2) …ask the teacher what they like. Red or white? A simple question we love to hear.
3) …club together. If you want to go the extra mile. Have a word with the parents on the playground or on the facebook group and put a couple of quid in each. Then you could get something truly wonderful for your truly wonderful class teacher.
AVOID…
1) …buying anything that says ‘World’s Best Teacher‘ on it. Very, very few of us are arrogant enough to believe this is true. We’re certainly not going to sit at home drinking tea from a ‘best teacher‘ mug, blowing our noses on ‘best teacher‘ hankies while wearing our ‘best teacher‘ tie and sock.
2) …letting your children choose the present. It’s rare to have the same taste as a 9 year old.
3) …letting your children make the present. While it can be very sweet, many teachers have their own children who make ‘precious’ gifts for us, so we’ve already got enough stuff stuck on the fridge.
Teaching is genuinely one of the best jobs in the world and it’s wonderful that some parents wish to thank us with gifts. I’m not saying you should to spend much money at all, but if you are, I hope these tips are useful to get something that will show the teacher just how thankful you are.