My daughter attends kindergarten at a daycare centre that has a kindergarten program. This will be her last Christmas at the centre.
I absolutely adore her teachers and the staff and would like to give them something nice this year for a gift. I though about gift cards but wasn’t sure.
Teachers - what type of gift from your students do you enjoy the most?
So far this year, I have received:
a lovely handmade bracelet
a ceramic frog (very cute, I collect frogs)
a hand drawn picture
chocolate chip cookies
chocolate covered cherries
a mystery food in a Christmas container, but I’m sure I’ll like it.
I love everything kids give me (for the record, I have 7th graders). Gift cards are awesome, but so are candles, baked goods- anything really! It is nice to be appreciated.
We give our daughter’s teachers each a gift card to a restaurant, and a gift card to an office-supply store.
Gifts that show some knowledge of me as a person: the best gift I ever got from a student was a box of wildly colored dry erase markers and fancy teas–I drink tea all day long in class and love it when kids go crazy drawing on my white board and she actually noticed that.
Notes about why I am a special teacher, especially specific anecdotes, are also precious.
I really like flowers, though not for Christmas because I am going to be leaving. But a few times I’ve had parents give me flower arrangements to keep on my desk and I’ve really enjoyed having them.
I am still grateful for less personal gifts, even the really kitchy ones that make me wonder if they have been paying attention at all (do I really seem like the scented candle type?). But if it’s going to be impersonal, I’d prefer a gift card to something I’ll never use.
As the child of an elementary school teacher, I should warn you that sometimes baked goods aren’t the best answer- sometimes the teacher’s family eats them all! Gift cards would be a good answer, or a gift certificate for a nice dinner out.
Red wine. Although that’s really from the parents, via the children (I hope!) Choclates are always welcome. But really, apart from when an older pupil has found something particularly individually suited to either me or them, the hand-made cards are the best. This year, having been off ill for a while until this week, I received a ‘get well/happy christmas’ card from a bunch of younger kids who didn’t know whether or not they’d see me again this term. Bless!
(I’m telling a big fat lie. Wine trumps cards.)
This year I got a stamp that says “From the library of Quasimodal” Awesome gift! I’m going to label all my music books.
I’ll say chocolates are nice…but not very creative. Who really needs more chocolate over christmas? (Homemade selections are much more thoughtful of course due to the time)
My mom’s taught sixth grade for 25 years now. What she does not need is another scented candle (allergic to scents), perfume (ditto), bath gel/lotion/powder (ditto) or another ogsdammed coffee mug. Seriously, one year she got 26 coffee mugs. We don’t have that much cabinet space!
What she likes, but doesn’t like to get, because she likes it too much: chocolate. 
Her favorite gifts every year: gift cards to restaurants. That’s giving her the gift of dinner with me! 
Or sometimes, with the other teachers.
While she’s appropriately grateful to all the students, she gives 9/10 of the stuff to me, to regift to those friends and family members I wouldn’t otherwise have the budget to shop for. So I appreciate all those scented candles and bath salts, but it’s probably not what her students’ parents had in mind.
Restaurant.com has great discounted gift certificates to local restaurants, if you know her taste or can tie a local eatery into something she’s done in class. My Mom was delighted with a gift cert to a local Greek restaurant after a social studies unit on Ancient Greece, for example. She invited the student and her parents to join her for redeeming that one, and they had a great time trying goat cheese and dipping bread in olive oil (novel experiences for an 11 year old!)
From what my wife experienced when she was a pre-school teacher, she probably has more things that say something sentimental about teachers than anyone could want or need.
Another thought: a horribly inappropriate present is better if your 6 year old picked it out than if you did.
Just in my short time as a teacher - please, no teacher-themed stuff. If she really likes it, she can get her own. Probably, she’s drowning in the stuff anyways.
I’d recommend against clothes, bath gels, candles, or other gift pack things.
Gift cards are really great, especially for books, food, or music. Also, good chocolate, like Godiva. None of that supermarket stuff, please.
And thank you for being sweet enough to get your kid’s teachers a present.
Bunch o’ crap in a coffee mug.
One of my favorite gifts was a big hanging basket of flowers to put outside. I got that at the end of the school year though.
But the ones I always found the most useful were the gift cards.
So, that is what I am getting my son’s teacher and her three aides.
As far as impersonal gifts go, my favorite was a gift card to Best Buy. I usually can’t justify buying a computer game, but with a Best Buy gift card, what else was I gonna do?
This year, though, I got what might be the best gift I’ll get as a teacher in a long time. We’re having a baby in about two weeks, and a classroom mom asked me to get out of the classroom for about an hour so she could do a surprise project with the kids. I complied (we had a grade-level half-day planning session on the calendar anyway). And today she presented me with the project: she’d had each kid draw a picture wishing my family well, and she’d ironed them onto fabric and sewn them into a baby quilt. It’s really pretty damned awesome.
Other gifts today included cookies (yay!), gift cards (yay!), and books (yay!). But the quilt takes the cake.
Daniel
I’m not a teacher… but every year, we make up cookie-mix-in-a-jar (you layer the dry ingredients for cookies in a quart canning jar, and attach instructions for how to make up the finished product). Lots of recipes for that at allrecipes.com. The teachers all seem to really like it - fresh oatmeal cookies when they want them rather than being glutted with consumables that must be consumed quickly before spoiling.
Last year I got a mini hand lotion set, a mug, candy, a Staples gift card & a mirrored, metal bookmark. This year, scented candles, another bookmark & a Panera gift card. And, of course, cards. One of my colleagues this year got tea, which she loves. I suppose I’ll just tell you why I liked these gifts.
The lotion & scented candles might be re-gifted by some people, it seems. The lotion works for me because I’m hard on my hands. I like the candles because they’re of a high quality & because I haven’t gotten candles 27,000 times yet. That said, I can see why teachers might end up re-gifting them.
I appreciated the Staples gift card because it allows me to save money for non-work expenses; I thought the bookmarks particularly appropriate for an English teacher. (I’m not insinuating that my non-departmental colleagues don’t read!). The Panera card’s a treat because I’ve never thought to eat there & now I’ll try something new. The mug is cool because I don’t have that many & 'cause I use it as storage space. And candy’s always dandy!
The best gifts, schmaltzy as this sentiment seems, are the cards signed by the kids. It makes me feel good to get the sense that they appreciate me. Maybe this is especially true because I work with middle schoolers, who are at the age when they can be beastly; I’m gratified to see that they really do care.
If I had to choose favorites, I’d choose gift cards - although a personalized stamp sounds great as well. I might avoid baked goods, though the thought is lovely; one never knows to what Teacher might be allergic.
I’m not a teacher, but my sister is, and I saw all the crap she had to haul out to the garage sale, and she’s only been teaching for a few years! Apples were a major theme. Blech.
Consumables are a good idea if you know what they like. For example, my sister’s favorite treat is Starbucks, and she’s often seen with a Starbucks cup, so getting Starbucks gift cards is a thrill for her. On the other hand, if you don’t know, they might never get used. She got some sort of a picnic set that had various foodstuffs, like a bag of flour, in it for some reason. Those never got used, as she never cooks.
If you don’t know, consider that teachers often pay for school supplies out of their own pocket. A gift card for Wal-Mart or Target, or for an office supply place, is a good idea. Gas cards, too - they have limited budgets. Gift cards for restaurants with a wide selection and aren’t too expensive (like Panera) are good as well. Things like dry-erase markers or other supplies they use a lot for class are a great idea, too.
She also likes schmaltzy gifts - things like framed pictures of groups of her kids, or even just hand-written thank you letters or cards. Those mean a lot to her; she emotionally invests a lot into her work.
Mama Zappa, I think I love you! That would be one of the coolest presents ever!
HS teacher chiming in. We don’t usually get too many gifts when the kids get to us. Makes sense to me, though: in the younger grades, the kiddo’s have only one teacher per year, whereas in HS, they’ve got seven. So far as I’m concerned, cards are just dandy. I’d rather hear how the kids enjoyed my class in a note than get more sweets that I don’t need. (But, if you noticed my response to Mama Z, I certainly wouldn’t turn them down… and it would be just plain rude to not eat them… )
One present that Left Hand of Dorkness got last year which I thought was cool was a gift card to a high-end supermarket. It was a real treat to splurge on NY strip steak and a good bottle of wine and not feel a bit guilty about it.
I teach in a poor school. Times are hard this year, so I got a lot of handmade cards. One girl who knows how I love chocolate with nuts gift wrapped a Hershey bar. The thing is, I love the handmade cards. They are gifts from the heart.