Teacher's Day Gift-Giving 101: The Do's & Don'ts
Advertisement
China celebrates Teacher's Day tomorrow (Sep 10)! Before you start panicking and rush out to buy new stationery for your kid's favorite teachers, check out this gift-giving guide by our very own Julie Wolf, Jingkids editor and long-time educator, for the do’s and don’ts of gift-giving, plus a few real life stories to help inspire you.
Don’t: Give overly personal items. While a gift certificate for plastic surgery or a gym membership might seem generous. It could also come across as a comment on your teacher’s appearance. And things like perfume or lotions are thoughtful but if you don’t know a teacher’s preferences or allergies it might go to waste. For heavens sake please do NOT give lingerie (yes that happened once…oh the stories I could tell but that is another blog).
Do: Add appropriate personal touches. Hopefully you have had a few personal exchanges with your child’s teacher at this point. Think about what you know about them. If they mentioned they love to travel at parent night a new travel journal is a very thoughtful gift and shows you were paying attention.
Parent Gift Win: I once had a parent who asked me a month into the school year “how do you do this every day?!” I half-jokingly quipped back “Coffee in the morning, alcohol at night.” At the end of the year she gave me a Starbucks gift card and bottle of wine with a note that said, “First week next year is on me!”
Don’t: Give large, heavy items. We are expats too and we move a lot! While mugs with your child’s face on them or a hardcover first edition book are thoughtful, they are just one more thing for us to pack and ship home at the end of our contract.
Do: Consider gifting cultural experiences. Expat teachers are generally a pretty adventurous bunch. We left most of our belongings in a storage shed somewhere, packed our lives into whatever would fit into a checked bag and came here to teach, in part, because we wanted to have a cultural experience. So, what are some cool Beijing things they might not have tried yet. Cooking class at The Hutong or Black Sesame Kitchen? What about tickets to the Peking Opera or Acrobatic Show? Think about the things you love doing that are unique to Beijing, there is a good chance they will love discovering them too.
Parent Gift Win: I was chatting with a parent at my school and I mentioned that I had enjoyed going to the Maliandao tea market here in Beijing and I was hoping to learn more about tea while I was here. A few weeks later she brought me a box of tea from her home town in Yunnan. I was touched that she had paid attention and remembered!
Do: Let your child have a say. Trust me, the teacher has had infinitely more time with your child than you have had, and your little one may have insight on the perfect gift. I can tell you first hand the things I know my students picked out are the ones that mean the most. The next story illustrates my point...
Child Gift Win: When I was moving from DC to New York I had to say good bye to some very special children. One little boy I worked with was incredibly intelligent but had been struggling with behavior issues. He had made immense progress because his mom had been very open to collaborating with me. We had two rules for ourselves. 1) give him specific choices not orders and 2) ask him ‘why’ when he was being stubborn about something we didn’t understand. On my last day he handed me a box with two small ceramic birds in it. His mom told me “I want you to know, he chose these and when I was only going to buy one, he was on the edge of a meltdown. I remembered what you said and asked ‘Why is it important we get two birds for Ms. Julie?’ He looked right at me and said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world ‘because they're loooove birds’”
Needless to say I cried really hard. Those birds are currently in storage back in New York but I will never get rid of them. They are a reminder of why I do what I do.
Don’t: Get into a contest with other parents over who can spend the most, Any decent teacher is not keeping score of who gifts what and the price tag. If you can’t afford to gift anything at all, don’t.
Do: Give honest thought to what will show genuine appreciation for the teacher’s efforts. A truly personal card from you or your child about how they have affected you will mean everything. I have stacks of hand drawn cards from students and kind words from parents, stained with my tears, that mean more to me than almost any other expensive store-bought gift I have ever received.
A note on group gifts: If the class parents are organizing a group gift I strongly encourage that it is an anonymous donation, not a set price per student. You don’t know what a family’s financial situation is and a teacher never ever wants to think that a family had to choose between purchasing something a child needed and not losing face.
Don’t: Give cash. This one will be controversial. I know many teachers will get upset with me for it but I am firmly opposed to cash gifts to teachers. Teachers are professionals who are compensated for there work (yes I know, they are under-compensated, that’s also another post). Taking cash from a parent feels a little too much like taking a tip for services rendered. I do understand that Hong Baos are a part of Chinese culture however, so teachers should accept graciously if a local parent insists.
Do: Give options. If you choose to give something with a monetary value, I suggest a gift card that offers teachers an option to pamper themselves. A spa treatment or a meal at a fancier restaurant isn’t something we are always able to treat ourselves too on a teacher’s salary and those small luxuries are appreciated.
A final word to my fellow educators. There is only one Do and one Don’t for us -
Don’t: expect anything at all. These are gifts, they are not an entitlement.
Do: accept all gifts with grace and genuine appreciation. Even if you don’t love it someone put time, money and effort into it.
Images: Black Sesame Kitchen, Pexels, Unsplash
KEEP READING
Advertisement