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.
