A Teacher on Teacher Gifts

I know the Internet is holding millions of posts about teacher gifts, but here is mine. Some of these are geared toward older students because I teach high school. It seems there is less gift giving for secondary teachers, I think because parents are intimidated by the sheer number of teachers their kids have.

• First it is usually best to give something consumable. In general anything that gets used up and doesn't use space is great. I will give some exceptions,


• I love when my seniors give me a pennant from the college they plan to attend. Christmas may be to soon for that, but it works great at the end of the year.


• If your child is part of a sport, club or activity they can give the teacher a t-shirt. I wear these on game days to show my support and they can usually be purchased for cheap. For a favorite teacher cafepress.com has some awesome shirts, you can search by subject. They are pretty pricey, so these would be just for a special teacher. The math and history are really funny.


• One of the best gifts I ever received was from a student who worked at Ben & Jerry's and she brought each teacher a pint of their favorite ice cream. If you child has a job, have them be a little creative.


• Food is always a winner. If you want to see a full sheet cake disappear put it in a teacher lounge. I don't know why, we can't resist.


• Gift cards are always great.

For our own children these are the offerings we have this year:

• Owen and I made soap this summer, we plan to give them to his teachers this year. We we wrapped them in cute paper, and tied them with raffia. ( No the caramels we made that day were for me, thanks to Swistle I have a serious caramel addiction)


• We will do the same thing we did last year and do a soup in a jar. Bud made cute labels for the jars and everyone seemed to enjoy the soup. I tested it out first and it was really good.


• Plates of cookies. My mom and I usually spend one day from 7:ooam to 9:00pm baking cookies. I have given a plate of these to our daycare lady every year since we met her. We moved into our current house three years ago on December 18th needless to say the cookies didn't get made, so we gave her a $50 gift certificate to her favorite restaurant. She was disapointed. Yeah, the cookie plate rules. Every year she tells me which family member loves which cookies, they apparently wait for it every year.


• We may try a drink mix this year, instead of the soup. Owen is big enough he can do a lot of it himself. Score!
• There are a lot of great food gift ideas on Allrecipes. (I spend countless hours here)

And most of all let's not forget the sincere card or letter. This is my personal favorite, I still have cards from my first students eleven years ago. I pin them all up on my wall, and read them when I am having a bad day. They are truly the best gift a teacher can get. And they are cheap.