Teacher Gift Etiquette?
For context: have one kid in a DOE public elementary school.
I'm just wondering if I am doing the right thing in terms of making my kid's teachers feel appreciated at the holidays and end-of-year.
Each year there's a classwide money collection over venmo- the Class Parent Representative collects it and uses the total to buy the teachers gifts- typically majority in a gift card with a few little extras. Smaller gifts are made to "specials" teachers, part-time paras, etc. Not sure if this is the norm all over the city but certainly in our neighborhood.
We give fairly generously to that collection, and write a nice card to the teacher(s) and send that in with kiddo's homework. But we don't individually give monetary or physical gifts beyond that. I don't really know how many other parents do.
My question is- do the teachers feel slighted/unappreciated when they don't get actual gifts from each kid's family? They are getting more from us than we'd be allowed to give as individuals, but of course they don't know that, and I definitely want them to feel appreciated, especially this year.