Nice Thing for Teachers About This Page:

[Teresa]

My DDs' school's Parents' Association has usually encouraged us to all chip in and buy the teachers gift cards, and expensive presents etc. at Parent-Teacher conferences (we also pay for the teachers to have a catered meal during conferences).
This year, they decided that the KIDS are the ones that need to learn to show appreciation for their teachers, and let's not have them competing finanacially.

So, what my kids are supposed to do is: either make a card or just write a note letting one or more of their teachers know what they like about class. And, they can take a small gift (no more than $5)

I think that's so much better!!

For those of you that are teachers, what have been your most memorable small gifts from kids?

[Fortissimo]

I always give kids going to WDW or DLR money for Mickey Bars. I had a family bring me back all of their empty wrappers. I loved it!

The best gift, however, had to be the Mike's Hard Lemonade. The student had no idea what it was, just knew that I like lemonade.

(Seriously, I like the cards and little notes the best. Oh, and pencils because pencils get eaten in my room!)

[graygables]

I taught high school, so our gifts were a little different. My favorites were coupon books for things like straightening bookshelves, dusting, cleaning chalkboards. The ones I have and still treasure, though, are the notes. I kept a couple of jars on my desk. One was "excuses", which I reminded them was alway empty, b/c there ARE no excuses... and the other was "dreams" in which I would find the occasional note. Sometimes it was just a messsage to the cosmos, but sometimes it was a note to me. Those were the best.

[LBAK]

The hand made Valentines and the hand made Christmas ornaments.

[MickeyMAC]

My best gifts are the daily hugs and the pictures they often draw for me. The really great gifts are the graduation announcements telling me all my hard work was not in vain they've made it. Have your children write a hand written note to the teacher and if they like that teacher tell her or him.

[wvugrrrl]

My mother is a teacher, and I remember one year, she had a student whose family was rather impoverished. For Christmas, that student told her he had something to give her, but it was too big to fit under her classroom tree, and his dad had it waiting out "in the truck" for her.
So, she goes downstairs, not really sure what to expect...there was a HUGE wild turkey in the truck (it was dead, and had been plucked and, I guess gutted). My mother was so surprised!
We're from the "boondocks," and while many around us go hunting (bow, rifle, trapping, etc), my family has never been "big game hunters." I just know we ate really well that Christmas, and I know my mother has never been so touched (or surprised) by a present since then.

[NanaTink]

The thing I remember most of what a student gave me was a handmade bookmark cross-stitched "teacher" because I always stuck a piece of paper in the lunchtime book I would read to the class and she thought I needed something nicer to mark our place! I still have that book mark, almost 20 years later!

[Tink and co.]

One little guy wrote me a poem (in which he said I was beautiful on the inside, guess I still need to work on the outside). No better compliment from a third grade boy.

[Cam22]

I teach high school English and I have the letters that sincerely tell me how I've helped that student.