Gifts for the Teacher

In this season of giving I get quite a few of my non-teacher friends and family asking me what types of gifts teachers like to receive from students.  I know that some schools discourage giving gifts, but even with that, I  know many parents want to give gifts if possible.  In my 6 years of teaching, I've been blessed to receive some really thoughtful and generous gifts from my students and their families.  

Here are a few ideas:

Gift Ideas For Teachers by conolley featuring body moisturizers

My Tips:

• Gift cards are almost always a winner.  If you don't know them very well, choose one that could be used several places.  Target is almost always a safe bet for anyone (unless you happen to live in the middle of nowhere and don't have one nearby.)
• Give a practical gift of something they enjoy.  Sometimes the best gifts are my everyday favorites like a 12 pack of Diet Mountain Dew or some Special K Bars.
• Find out "their thing."  My thing is K-State and it's pretty apparent when you walk into my classroom. It's a pretty safe bet that I'll love anything K-State...  Jewelry, blankets, decorations, etc.
• A useful gift set is another safe bet.  I actually received one of these Starbucks sets from a student.  I'm no Starbucks addict, but I do love me some hot cocoa and a cute travel mug!  It's something that is generic enough that most people can probably use it.
• Bath & Body Works products...  They have a great exchange policy!  If you didn't already know, B&BW will let you exchange products if you don't like the scent.  This always makes me feel better when I give something to someone.  Last year my old roommate was able to swap out several gifts from her students for items in scents she enjoyed.
• Classroom supplies are always needed.  I don't know many teachers that couldn't use more classroom supplies like Post-Its, Sharpies, or colorful grading pens!  
• Note cards and stationary with a personal touch.  I love cute notepads and cards.  You can get plenty of cute patterns at specialty stores or even places like Target or Michaels.  If you want to step it up a notch, have it personalized through a website like Vista Print or Shutterfly!

I hope that helps you with any last minute shopping you may still have, or keep these ideas in mind for teacher appreciation or end-of-the-year gifts!

Happy Tuesday!

(Student) Teacher Apprciation

This post is a bit overdue, but I still wanted to share...

My student teacher completed her time with us a few weeks before school actually ended.   I wanted to do something special as a surprise for her, but with our busy schedule and her still being in the building through her last official week, we weren't really able to do much sneaking around.  We celebrated her last day with donuts, but promised we'd have a surprise for her when she returned for Field Day the following week.

I sent home a note on Monday asking the students to donate small items for our student teacher.  Since she doesn't yet have a full-time job lined up for next year, we sought generic items that would be helpful for any teacher.  My cooperating teacher did the same thing for me and I really appreciated their gifts, so I wanted to do the same!  

We were overwhelmed with the generosity of the students in the class!  I was shocked with how many items we had to fill her bag!  The teacher bag I had almost didn't fit everything!

In addition, I had the students type a letter, poem, acrostic, or essay for her and I assembled them into a little booklet.  Their writing was very encouraging, sweet, and of course, hilarious!  My students are quite honest and funny sometimes.  She's definitely going to have some entertaining reading material!

She was completely delighted over the bag of goodies that we gave her.  The kids and their families really outdid themselves with this one!  (The pic above doesn't even show everything that we ended up collecting!)    I know that these goodies were greatly appreciated and that she's now got the makings for an awesome classroom!

Celebrations and Appreciation

The end of the year is just around the corner and just when we think we're done with testing, what do we get to do more of?  TESTING!

We do AIMSweb math and fluency assessments with all of our students.  I've pretty much been spending all of my free time testing kids.  Aside from hating the fact that all this testing take sooooo much time, I do really enjoy seeing the progress the kids have made over the course of the school year.  My kids have really rocked it this year!

(I'm really not saying this to brag, by the way.)

It's just been really cool to celebrate all of these awesome accomplishments with my students.  One of my biggest success stories is a girl that came to my class about a month into the school year.  She'd really struggled with reading and when she came to my class she was reading on a first grade level.  Today when she took her fluency assessment she met the end-of-the-year benchmark for third grade!  In addition she scored in the top performance category on both of her state assessments!  I shared this celebration with her mom this afternoon and almost cried!  It's been a team effort to get this little girl on grade level...  Her parents, my amazing para, and I have all worked together to make this happen for her.  She's worked extremely hard this year and has made amazing gains!

It just so happened that this girl's mom came in with some lovely flowers and a super sweet card for both my para and I this afternoon.  All four of us were excited to celebrate this year's success together and know that this girl is going to move onto fourth grade as a success story!

There are a lot of times when I feel like I'm not doing enough for my students and just not being the best teacher I could be.  I compare myself to others around me and wonder if I'm doing enough for my students.  I think we all go through these times where our self-esteem as a teacher is a bit low and we focus too much on comparing ourselves to others.  Looking back at this school year and thinking about where these students started out at and where they are now is reassurance that maybe I've been doing things right after all...  Just maybe.  :)

Teacher Appreciation

I had to share this cute idea for for a teacher appreciation gift. I've been seeing a lot of other bloggers post ideas online this week and it's given me a lot of neat ideas for ANYtime gifts!

I received this the other day from one of my students. It's simply a small metal bucket (I have several from Hobby Lobby and the dollar section at Target), two flowers cut out of scrapbooking paper, a flower clip, and some candy! Clipped to the flower was a Target gift card, too! (They know me so well!) I think I'm going to steal this idea for some of my end of the year gifts that I will be giving to paras and a few other staff members that have helped me out this year.

Other than the gift card part of this, the whole thing would only cost about $3-4 max to assemble. Of course it's nothing super fancy, but it's a thoughtful and cute gift idea. There are a lot of ways that you could vary this idea for whatever, but this was different than other teacher appreciation gifts I've received in the past.