Reply to Stop with the gift cards!

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Stop with the gift cards!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I like how OP responds to several posts, but can’t take two seconds to explain why donating the gift cards to the staff of a nursing home would be such a horrible idea.[/quote]

NP:

Johnny takes level 1 class with me freshman year, he gets a A, gives me $200 to a restaurant at the end of the year.

Next year, I get my rosters for the level 2 sections I teach, and Johnny is on it again. He is sitting at an 89.3 at the end of the year, asking me to please bump it up.

Or Larla gives me a $100 to target at the end of junior year, and then contacts me 3 weeks into summer asking me to write her teacher recommendation for college. I don’t particularly enjoy larla, she’s often late to class, not a strong student, nor have we had any real conversations this year, so I’d rather not write it…but she just paid me.

Do you not see how that’s a potentially awkward/stressful situation, even if I donated the gift cards to the fire station? Just a transactional situation I’d rather avoid.

If you want to give thanks, write an FCPS cares note. We get recognized, our admin is made aware, and it’s clearly for something specific rather than “here’s $100 because you’re poorer than me” or “here’s $200 because I might need you to do my kid a favor down the road”

I know, YOUR intentions are nothing but kind and grateful, but not everyone’s are and it’s really hard to tell sometimes.[/quote]

I highly doubt high school parents and giving cash to every teacher. I think most people envision this for elementary, where the stakes are not as dramatic as you laid out.[/quote]

But OP is a TJ teacher, so it IS happening in some circles.

And even in elementary school...you want the recommendation/GBRS/HOPE for AAP, you want the teacher to help support algebra 1 placement in 7th grade even though they scored 498 on the SOL, you want a recommendation letter to a summer program, you want placement with teacher X not Y next year, etc.  It's just uncomfortable.  Again, YOU probably don't, but some do, and it's not comfortable to try to figure out intentions behind gift cards.

A token amount to say thank you (under $50 combined across all events for the year as laid out in the boarddocs link) like $25 to the elementary class fund in august, buying something off the classroom wishlist during teacher appreciation week, and $10 to Amazon in June is very different than $100 gifted straight to the teacher all at once.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics