a present for the teacher...

When my 19 year old daughter was at school we used to buy the teacher and the helper a gift at christmas and at the end of the school term. now i have three more children and there are so many people work in the classrooms it costs so much to buy gifts for everyone so what I do now adays is i buy one book for each child to take to school for the classroom. The teachers like that idea as they have a book to read to the classroom and none of the teachers are upset because as you haven't brought them anything.

I never remember getting anything for my teachers when i was in high school. My Mum would always make a little gift box full of chocolates at the end of each school year - mind you, i'm in Australia so our end of school year is right before Xmas! Mum even did it for the teachers i didn't like but ah well! I think it's a nice idea knowing the teachers had put up with me for the entire school year so a little something was always ok! I'm not really sure why Mum started doing it but my teachers always seemed to appreciate it & i know i wasn't the only one who's mother gave the teacher an end of year/Xmas gift!

My son has bought presents for teachers before he used to buy one for his main teacher and his resource teacher he had to swithc schools last year and the resource teacher was horrible he did not learn anything and he said she was mean so we just didn't buy presents this year.

I only get presents for the teachers of my private lessons. If there are 30 odd other people in the class during the lesson then the teacher/student relationship is just a little bit less personal. But this year is my last year of highschool so I will probably buy christmas/goodbye presents for all of my favourite teachers. The teachers that I haven't found exceptional don't get anything. BWAHAHAHAHA! But it is the general trend that the matrics tend to get the better teachers if they are available so there are a quite a few that I will go out of my way for.

At our preschool and elementary school teachers get presents for Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter, and end of year. I think it's out of hand, but also don't want my kid to be the odd one out when the teacher opens things up in front of all of them. Since we have three kids, I opt for simple stuff. This year Easter was a small chocolate bunny and end of year was a flower pot the kids decorated with those foam stickers. I put a plant in it. All in all not more than $5 at the most per teacher for the last one. I have to get a bit inventive as preschool for example both older kids had the same teacher for both years they were there. Don't know about the younger one yet, but the pattern might repeat itself.