Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifts for teachers

Wow. This makes me glad I live in an area with a fairly low cost of living and fairly moderate average income. When anything formal is done we're typically not asked for more than $5. I usually spend around $10 for Christmas gifts and then anywhere from $10-$20 for end of year gifts. I felt like it got really expensive this year because I spent around $20 per teacher and my son had 2 main teachers and 2 special ed teachers!

I've never heard of tipping teachers.

I've never heard of a "room mom".

What is a "room mom"?

Maybe it means something different in different areas but where I grew up, a "room mom" was a mom volunteer that helped with school parties and field trips.

The "room moms" were the cupcake bringers and kid herders.

Yep, that is the room mom in a nutshell. The person who plans and organizes the parties and brings in the treats. As a room mom I also organized a Christmas gift from the class and an end of the year gift.

I work as an instructional assistant in a middle school. I wanted to share my perspective on gift giving. At my school, gift giving is not the norm and is not expected. We do occasionally receive little thank you gifts around Christmas time from individual students and the ones I love the most are the homemade ornaments or goodies. During Teacher Appreciation Week, goodies were left in the staff room. In my opinion, this is a nice way to say thank you. I would never expect more than that. I would feel terrible if I found out that parents were being pressured to give a gift. There are many ways to say thank you and just knowing that your hard work is appreciated should be enough. I agree with those who encourage their children to write personal thank you notes.

Thanks for all the replies. Wow! This is very interesting.

I do ask my kids to write personal notes for the teachers, and I do feel a bit of pressure to donate to the gift fund. At the school my kids attend, you only get to sign the card if you donate. It seems like it's almost public shaming as a way of forcing people to donate.

I suspect that the people collecting the money wouldn't see it this way, though. I can imagine that from their perspective, you shouldn't be allowed to sign the card if you didn't make a donation. They're trying to be nice and probably don't see that there's another side to their actions.

I disagree Val. I never excluded a child from the card and quite honestly, because of that, I never kept track of who gave or didn't give and couldn't tell you today who gave or didn't give. It is the Humanitarian in me that is going to say that I choose to believe that most people would rather include children then penalize them for decisions made by their parents. And I really try to believe that most teachers would feel the same way.

The fossil thing seems really cool. Is this a public or private school ? I thought the workbook pieces (worksheets around a holiday theme) was pretty standard curriculum.

The teachers do give gifts during holidays -- usually it is grade level workbooks from the dollar shop.


While I agree with this, in general, I think some room moms can be pretty aggressive, for lack of a better word, when it comes to things that they are very vested in. I do think that excluding children from the card list is pretty standard practice -- maybe this is regional ?

OK, maybe I am wrong here. I have a problem differentiating what is normal a lot of the time. I often think that people do things a certain way and find out that they don't. I don't know why that is. My husband tells me that my expectations of others are too high. He says that I expect from others exactly what I give and it isn't realistic. I guess that is a back handed compliment, but maybe people aren't as altruistic as I think they are.

I do think the room parent in my DD class this year is super aggressive and actually quite offensive, so I bet you are right (this is probably more normal) and I am wrong. I find myself seriously disappointed these days.

Sorry to Val!! LOL

This is interesting to me. I live in a rather low-income area (per capita income well under 50K--I think it is like 20K??) and teacher gifts (no one has organized one this year which is weird) have always been expected to be at least $10 per family and more like $20. They go to gift cards and are expected at Xmas and end of year both. Because I have heard nothing about a gift card this year, I bought a gift. I gave homemade goodies and a giftcard at Xmas. I have never had a teacher give my child a gift.