This year at my kids’ school we got a new Head of School. He’s amazing and brilliant and all the other things you would want from a Head of School. And like any new leader, he has been putting his own stamp on things. One of the first changes he made was to instill a “No Gift” policy at school. That went over well with some but not so well with others. So I thought it’d be a good idea to explore this new trend as we enter the holiday season.
Let me start by explaining the gift giving at our school. My kids go to a private K-12 school in Los Angeles. There are a number of families at the school that some would describe as having “large pocketbooks”. So come holiday season, the gifts can get rather extravagant. We usually give $50 gift certificates to each our kids’ main teachers, so that’s $150 for three gifts, which may sound like a lot to some, reasonable to others, and cheap to a few. But to put it in context, one family at our kids’ school reportedly bought all of their children’s teachers brand new Ipads. Last I checked, those will set you back about $500 at the minimum, and close to $1,000 if you get the ones with cellular data. And it doesn’t stop there. Gifts have even included tickets to special sold out events and all expense paid trips.
So if a teacher receives $50 bucks from one family and a gift worth $500 bucks from another, does that mean one kid is only getting 1/10th of the attention from the teacher as the other? Personally, I don’t think so. I never expected my gift to be something that “buys” the teacher’s attention. It’s just my way of saying “thank you” for all of the extra time and energy I know teachers give their students. I also know that teachers work very hard for modest money. So my hope is that my gift helps make their holiday less hard on their “smaller pocketbooks”.
And do I think that the family that buys a $500 Ipad for a teacher is thinking that their kid will get extra special attention? I certainly hope not. At our school it’s possible that the $500 gift just means the same to those people’s pocketbook as the $50 does to mine.
However, where does this leave the teacher? What if the teacher is feeling that the gift is inappropriately large? After all, they have a job to do which requires them to stay objective. Do they feel conflicted?
Clearly the difference between a $50 gift and a $500 gift is dramatic, but consider this scenario. Supposed we’re talking about kids in 12th grade. Suppose in addition to it being the holiday season it is also college application season. Suppose that same teacher who is receiving an Ipad or even just a $50 gift certificate is also being asked to write a letter of recommendation for a someone’s college application. Could this change their objectivity?
I get the desire to do something nice for your 2nd graders homeroom teacher. They develop such special bonds with our kids. But in some way the Middle School teachers really deserve the biggest gift of everyone because, after all, they have to teach 13 year olds. But when it comes to high school teachers, these ones have direct effects on where our kids head out into their adult lives. So gifts really do put them in an odd spot.
Many organizations organize group gifts, where every family in a class is asked to donate $5 to a group gift certificate. The problem with this is not the pressure it puts on teachers, but pressure it puts on the parents if they don’t want to participate, or can’t. It’s usually made optional, but it’s not always presented that way. And someone is still in charge of keeping track of who is paying what, so the pressure is there regardless. And the person organizing it often becomes resentful of the fact that some don’t participate. Oh, but I’m sure that mom would NEVER say anything about it to any other mom in the class, right? Because moms never gossip!
A number of schools around the country already have gift limits. In Massachusetts, for example, no public employee (that includes teachers) may receive a gift of more than $50 from any one individual. If parents want to give a larger gift to a class, however, they can do that, provided it is actually used for the class. Within the Los Angeles school district, the limit is $100 from any one person within a 12 month period. This would include holiday gifts, end of the year gifts, birthday presents, teacher appreciation, etc. But many parents and teachers don’t abide by this rule.
When the announcement of our school’s new policy was made at our last Parents’ Association meeting, one of the parents stood up and suggested that in lieu of candles, mugs, gift certificates or Ipads, we should ask our kids to write letters to their teachers. This idea was also mentioned in a great blog post on RantsfromMommyland.com. They conducted a survey and found that even the teachers would overwhelmingly prefer these over boxes of chocolates or bottles of scented lotion.
Lastly, consider the message it sends our kids if we ask them to write a letter from the heart to show the holiday spirit instead of grabbing one more of those meaningless gift basket. In the end, that will have much more influence on our kids’ future than any expensive gift we buy for their teacher. And if that’s not reason enough for you, think of how much more meaningful that teacher’s letter of recommendation will be if they’ve gotten a glimpse inside your child’s heart.
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