departure gift?
My son will be changing daycare and I'm planning to do something nice for his current teachers. Does anyone have advice about appropriate departure gifts? Cash amounts? I'm thinking of bringing a cake on his last day.
6 Answers
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As a teacher, I can tell you that I truly appreciate hand-made cards from the kids and if it's a monatary gift, then gift cards from Borders, Target or Amazon are great! The amount- anything around $20+ is nice.
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I think a Target gift card is nice -- not quite cash, but practical. I think we did $50 last time we did this.
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Our preschool discourages cash as a general policy, aside from the formalized parent council gifts (aggregated contributions). But we are encouraged to, say, give a card (maybe with a handprint or photo or drawing?) or flowers. A cake sounds like a lovely idea.
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We give either cash or a Target gift card. If it is someone we love, we give $100, otherwise we give $50. It isn't like we're swimming in money but it means a lot more to them than it does to us. We also bring in a plate of cookies and write a note.
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To piggyback on the origial question: How do you handle this when there are several teachers? My son's room has one main teacher, but also several other caregivers who come in and out at various times. I'm never sure how to deal with this -- is is OK to just gift the main teacher, and maybe do cards or some small gifts for the others? Also, I'm always afraid I'll leave someonen out.
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This is a good question and I'm not sure about the protocol for this. I ended up giving gifts in different amounts to each teacher depending on how much time my son had spent with each one. I gave the most to the 2 infant teachers who had taken care of him for 12 months. I gave smaller amounts to the director of the program and the 3 toddler teachers who he had been with for just 1 month. I found this to be very tricky because then I was giving gifts to everyone but the preschool teachers. All the teachers thanked me for the gifts so I hopefully made them feel appreciated for all their hard work. The best gift that they gave me (besides taking amazing care of my son for 13 months) was a scrapbook with photos of my son playing at daycare and personal messages from the teachers.
