Between $36-180? How weirdly specific.
I received 2 letters in my child’s backpack.
One was from the school office "Psst this is a surprise, please send minimum of $5 in with little jimmy so we can get Mrs. Smith a present, but don’t tell her.
And the other was from the 2nd teacher in the class saying let’s surprise the other teacher with a nice gift for $10.
Oh forgot, there was a 3rd letter asking for $10 for less fortunate people.
I did. Nicely --ish, but the PTO president is a friend of mine. I first told her how I felt about our school’s culture:
(snipped)
I think she’s mad at me, though, cause she’s not helping the situation and last year she bitched with me about this stuff. And her husband has $$, by the way.
Well, $36 is ‘double chai [life]’ and it’s popular to give that amount in donations or gifts in Jewish circles. $180 is divisible by 18, so, yeah. The numeral 18 is supposed to represent life. Don’t even get me started on Bar Mitzvah gifts!
I taught high school for 26 years. Our parent support group occasionally provided breakfast for us and usually some candy at Christmas and Valentine’s Day. I seldom got gifts from students or parents, but the ones I most appreciated were Starbuck’s gift cards or homemade goodies.
As a teacher in Britain, this is bizarre to me. I could probably count on one hand the gifts I’ve received in over ten years of teaching. I wouldn’t accept any “gift” that I knew had been asked for. It’s disgusting.
We usually do a homemade card and a gift cert for Tim’s or something ($10-20), maybe some cookies (since I love to bake for the season so I bring platters to work and give to family and such).
That seems a bit excessive in the OP though…
I am astonished. I have literally never heard of giving gifts to teachers. Sounds like a bribe to me. Since I am visiting my son, I just asked if they give gifts and they say yes, but only at the end of the school year. As a college teacher, I certainly never received anything.
When I was going through elementary and middle school, my mom was never part of the PTO or the PTA or anything like it. She was a teacher at the high school nearby.
Instead of really going out and buying gifts, most of the time I’d bring my teachers tins of homemade cookies. We would give them to my “main” teachers, depending on how our classes had been structured that year. Sometimes we’d just give them to my favorite teachers.
By the time I got to high school–I attended the same school she taught at, and actually had her for homeroom my freshman year–we’d cut waaaay back on how often we gave out cookie tins. She give them to certain co-workers of hers. I gave tins to the teachers I really loved.
I’d say we spent, say $20 at most on gifts. It wasn’t something we did in high school or junior high, but in elementary school. And there’s no way they would have gotten anything if they’d been so rude as to ask for it.
Something like homemade cookies, or a card, is reasonable (though not required!). At most, a jar of homemade jam, or maybe a small Starbucks gift card or the like if you’re not good at home-made. It shouldn’t be pricy, and it’s tacky beyond belief to actually ask for something.
That’s for holiday gifts. If the school is in dire financial straights, and the teachers need help getting school supplies for various projects, then it’s fine to ask parents for a voluntary extra contribution (emphasis on voluntary). In an ideal world, that would never be necessary, but it’s not the school’s fault they don’t have funding.