Private School teacher gifts

[Anonymous]

As a private school teacher I accept ANY and ALL gifts.

[Anonymous]

For those who say they do gift cards or cash of 50+, are you on schcools with gift policies. After dutifully following ours last year and just doing notes, I discovered that many, many people were doing gifts anyway. This year I’m torn - follow the rules again, break them a little with a token gift and risk seeming, as some on here say, cheap, or just break it a lot, which feels disrespectful of the school policy. For the record no option will be a financial hardship, but I also don’t want to undercut the policy, unless I really am the only one actually following it.

On a related note, kudos to those schools who actually enforce their policies. They either shouldn’t have them or should actually enforce them.

[Anonymous]

Apparently I can’t type today...sorry for the fumble fingers mistakes...

[Anonymous]

No one is enforcing a policy if they have one. It’s just there to make poors and cheapos comfortable with not giving a real gift.

[Anonymous]

At our school, the policy is followed by almost all parents.

[Anonymous]

In Elementary, do you give to all the specials teachers or just the homeroom teacher?

[Anonymous]

I hate the stress of trying to decide what to give. Our school encourages to donate to a teacher gift fund for all. We do that ($200) and then you will see other parents showing up with all kinds of other gifts. I feel pressured to then buy additional gift cards for each teacher which adds up when you have multiple kids.
It feels strange to be spending more on gifts for teachers than my own family members.

[Anonymous]

My husband is a teacher at a private school. His school does the everybody-all-in gift card donation thing and he says he prefers that, not just because it's nice to get a single generous gift card than a lot of little ones, but because it eliminates the weirdness of getting things from some students and not others.

That said, he has saved every card of thanks a family and/or student has ever written him in a box since the start of his career. So if you're wondering if teachers really care about those things, I know of at least one who does.

[Anonymous]

Was there ever an organized teacher gift collection at Stone Ridge? My DD is in high school there and I’ve never heard of anything like that. Nor did we get any gifts for DD’s teachers. There are 7-8 of them each year - do people really get things for each teacher at a high school? How do you even give them to a high school teacher? My DD would rather jump into a cold river then hand out gifts to teachers - seems inappropriate.