buy your teacher a nice end of the school year gift please!

[Anonymous]

Not allowed. There are dollar limits to gifts. It used to be $20 per year per staff member. It's. not likely it's been raised by much.

Also, and I cannot enphasize this enough, most teacher do not want gifts. They want gifts cards, ie money, and most of all, they want well-behaved students and undemanding parents. The greatest gift you can give a teacher is a kid who sits and listens.

[Anonymous]

Teachers are not the only profession struggling with low COL raises. At least they have the opportunity to work over the summer weeks to enhance their income or even go to college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For elementary do you like when kids make something/write a note?

Any hand written card or note is always loved. The hand drawn pictures are cute but they are not saved. Some teachers keep everything. Most do not keep hand made presents, or even store bought presents (coffee mugs, candles, lotion, etc).

[Anonymous]

Was it really only a 1.25% raise? Why did Fairfax give a 4% raise?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Please don’t buy us a nice gift. If you really appreciate a teacher, an email or card will go a lot further to show that appreciation. I’ve been trying to do that and send personal positive emails to parents of students this week. Words mean more to people than stuff. Do the same for the teachers you care about.

Parent here, but in addition to sending a personal email/card to the teacher, I would also encourage parents to email the principal/assistant principal and cc the teacher.

Thank you but that’s really not needed. Another change that has happened in many districts, the principals and assistants are young and inexperienced. The experienced teachers do not at all care what they think of us. They are the ones who come and go quickly.

Can anyone explain this? I have half a dozen public elementaries and a Catholic K-8 in my town and the principals at ALL of them are under 35. They like to talk a big game about being an instructional coach to the teachers and if I were a seasoned teacher I'd be annoyed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Please don’t buy us a nice gift. If you really appreciate a teacher, an email or card will go a lot further to show that appreciation. I’ve been trying to do that and send personal positive emails to parents of students this week. Words mean more to people than stuff. Do the same for the teachers you care about.

Parent here, but in addition to sending a personal email/card to the teacher, I would also encourage parents to email the principal/assistant principal and cc the teacher.

Thank you but that’s really not needed. Another change that has happened in many districts, the principals and assistants are young and inexperienced. The experienced teachers do not at all care what they think of us. They are the ones who come and go quickly.

Can anyone explain this? I have half a dozen public elementaries and a Catholic K-8 in my town and the principals at ALL of them are under 35. They like to talk a big game about being an instructional coach to the teachers and if I were a seasoned teacher I'd be annoyed.

You are quoting me and I’ll give my opinion. Becoming an administrator doesn’t pay well and is filled with meetings. It has less job security than teaching. I like being a teacher because I like working with kids, I don’t like sitting in meetings talking about the latest educational jargon. It’s the younger people who teach for 3 years, don’t really like teaching and want out of the classroom, who go into administration. This is why so many are out of touch with teachers, parents and students now. They barely taught and don’t have kids of their own yet. Or their own children are babies because they are so young.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Please don’t buy us a nice gift. If you really appreciate a teacher, an email or card will go a lot further to show that appreciation. I’ve been trying to do that and send personal positive emails to parents of students this week. Words mean more to people than stuff. Do the same for the teachers you care about.

Parent here, but in addition to sending a personal email/card to the teacher, I would also encourage parents to email the principal/assistant principal and cc the teacher.

Thank you but that’s really not needed. Another change that has happened in many districts, the principals and assistants are young and inexperienced. The experienced teachers do not at all care what they think of us. They are the ones who come and go quickly.

Can anyone explain this? I have half a dozen public elementaries and a Catholic K-8 in my town and the principals at ALL of them are under 35. They like to talk a big game about being an instructional coach to the teachers and if I were a seasoned teacher I'd be annoyed.

A lot of principals shoot off to an office job or go and get consultant jobs. Being admin is worse than being a teacher. Most are wrangling the worst behaved kids and dealing with angry parents all day long. They also have the long hours to go with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:APS is only giving teachers a 1.25% raise this year. With inflation, this translates to actually making less money than last year. Hoping we don't lose some fantastic teachers over the summer...neighboring districts did much better.

And 1.25% is more than some of us are getting in our jobs. So, we are to spend that giving gifts to all of our kids' teachers, some of whom aren't particularly good? Cost of living has gone up for all of us. Notes of appreciation should be just as rewarding, or more so, than a gift. We all would appreciate that type of acknowledgement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many parents are not getting ANY raise at all, and will also effectively be making less money due to inflation.
It's not the parents' job to subsidize your salary.

NP, and not a teacher myself.

Fair enough, but more and more teachers are leaving, and we can't force them to stay -- of course. So get ready for that, too.

Life's been a real B lately.

Gifts from parents are not going to keep a teacher from leaving.

[Anonymous]

Get a summer job and it won’t be a problem. I’d agree to make 30% less money if I had summers off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here and no, this isn't how it works. (Plus, PLENTY of parents give me $...allowed or not.)

You want teachers to stay? Parent your child. Get them off screens (teachers cannot compete with non stop entertainment).
Support us: call the principals with good news about us.
Talk to admin about discipling kids. Be pro suspending kids, and bringing back detention.
Admin doesn't enforce anything anymore because they're afraid of parents so teachers have to deal with kids misbehaving all day.

I hope you move on from APS. I wouldn't want my children being taught by you. Yikes.

Sorry about your raise though. Teachers do deserve better.

You cannot assume PP is addressing you specifically when she says "parent your child." She's talking about what teachers want generally, and enough parents do neglect to parent their children to the point where teachers are stuck with the task. Obviously someone who is going to talk to admin about disciplining kids isn't going to be the type of parent who has to parent their child.

Please don't hope that PP moves on. We really do need teachers to stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many parents are not getting ANY raise at all, and will also effectively be making less money due to inflation.
It's not the parents' job to subsidize your salary.

NP, and not a teacher myself.

Fair enough, but more and more teachers are leaving, and we can't force them to stay -- of course. So get ready for that, too.

Life's been a real B lately.

Gifts from parents are not going to keep a teacher from leaving.

True, but often one of the reason teachers leave is because they are being treated like crap by parents. A little gesture might go a long way.

[Anonymous]

To the PPs who brought up whether this is allowed: The limit is $100 in APS. (That’s from a single family, over one full school year.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get a summer job and it won’t be a problem. I’d agree to make 30% less money if I had summers off.

Oh yes, the “summers off” statement. When you work 60+ hours a week at a job that provides absolutely no down time and no flexibility, those UNPAID summers become the only break you get.

And many of us end up working job #2. It’s not like we are lazing around the pool.

And on topic: please don’t get me anything. I’m a professional and I’m simply doing my job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many parents are not getting ANY raise at all, and will also effectively be making less money due to inflation.
It's not the parents' job to subsidize your salary.

NP, and not a teacher myself.

Fair enough, but more and more teachers are leaving, and we can't force them to stay -- of course. So get ready for that, too.

Life's been a real B lately.

Gifts from parents are not going to keep a teacher from leaving.

True, but often one of the reason teachers leave is because they are being treated like crap by parents. A little gesture might go a long way.

Teachers leave because of disrespect, but also because this job offers very little work/life balance.

There was a thread on DCUM recently about how much salary to demand if a job requires nights and weekends. Posters seemed to be in agreement that a job that requires those hours should be 250K+, and some were writing that is far too low to give up work/life balance.

New teachers do it for about $60K.