Teacher Appreciation: Gifts They’ll Actually Love

National Teacher Appreciation Week is May 3 - 7 this year. Although it is usually celebrated for an entire week each year, I think most of us agree that teachers truly deserve to be recognized and appreciated all year long. This past calendar year has been especially challenging for teachers and school staff. Teachers have had to exercise a great amount of energy to adapt and learn new platforms and ways of doing school and be flexible with all the changes happening around them. 

Our teachers at PCPA have been amazing this past school year with learning brand new online platforms to teach our students effectively all the while making it a personal and engaging experience for so many who are new to online school.

Needless to say, teachers absolutely deserve to be recognized and thanked for their time, efforts, and personal care for helping our children make it through this school year. 

As a mom, I usually head straight to Pinterest to search for DIY gift ideas when it comes to occasions like Teacher Appreciation Week. However, sometimes it feels like I’m falling into a black hole of pins (or ideas) that get hard to sort through. And considering the hardship on teachers from pandemic this past year, I’d rather spend my efforts (and money) on giving my daughter’s teachers something they’ll actually love and appreciate. 

So I narrowed down a list of 5 items for teacher appreciation week that is a no frills, no extra DIYing with a Cricut, something that your everyday Joe can put together. I searched the internet (and yes, Pinterest too) and narrowed down this list to make it easy for you to give your child’s teacher the perfect gift this year. Depending on the age of your child and if this is an elementary teacher or a subject teacher for high school, you can tweak the ideas to fit your needs. These 5 gifts can work for any teacher and some of them won’t cost you a dime. 

Here are 5 teacher appreciation gifts your child’s teacher will actually love:

1. Send a handwritten card (or an e-card).

Call me old school, but there is truly nothing more heartfelt than a handwritten message expressing gratitude from a student. In this digital age, a lot of conversations can feel impersonal, but there’s something about an old fashion greeting card, or note that is authored by a child that brings out sincerity and thoughtfulness. Teachers are usually the ones giving out recognition to their students, as is the nature of their job. However, a genuine “thank you” is a priceless gift of words of affirmation that can brighten their day. It’s rewarding for teachers to hear that they’re making an impact in their student’s lives and that their pupils are reciprocating care in return. 

2. Donate books to your teacher’s classroom library.

Although teachers have school funded supplies and books, many will go out of their way to purchase extra materials that they find valuable and meaningful to their classroom. Contributing a book or two to your teacher’s class library is a helpful way for them to build resources that can be shared for years to come. Sometimes classroom books can get worn out over the years or lent out to students and never brought back. Your contribution can help them replenish their library. There are also new books being published every year, so you could even ask your child’s teacher for a library wish list of titles they would like to add to their classroom collection. 

3. Create a word cloud poster.

Word cloud posters are easy to put together and can make a beautiful piece of art for teachers to hang on their wall and admire for years to come. It’s basically a collage of words that create an image that can be printed and framed or emailed as an e-copy if you’re sending digital gifts this year. A pre-made word cloud for a teacher can look like this one from PTO Today. Or you can customize a word cloud poster yourself like this one from Etsy. You can pick your own colors and attributes that describe your teacher, or even make this a group gift from other classmates. It’s an inexpensive gift that can look polished with color printing and a nice frame that your child’s teacher can appreciate forever.

4. Send them a teacher appreciation book.

If you’re looking for a gift that has a personal touch from your child then you’ve found it. A lot of the time teacher appreciation gifts are things that parents have picked out for their child’s teacher and the student is just the vessel that carries the gift over. That’s totally ok! Especially since younger children in particular rely more on their parents for these things. This teacher appreciation book brings a whole other level of thoughtfulness directly from the student, no matter how young. For younger elementary aged students, you can order a blank Teacher Appreciation Book with prompts that your child can fill in and color and wrap it up and bring to school or mail to their teacher. For older children, they can create their own teacher appreciation book with their own pictures and drawings and written prompts about their favorite things they’ve learned in class, what they appreciate about their teacher and positive attributes. If your child likes to draw, this can be the perfect solution for them to add their unique personality into their teacher’s gift.

5. Send a practical gift card.

This one was unavoidable. A good practical gift card is a tried and true gift for teachers. It’s a thoughtful gesture that allows teachers to get items they really need or want. You may have a teacher who doesn’t necessarily want a mug filled with candy this year, or perhaps they do, but they want to choose their own style of mug and type of candy. If you’re not sure which way to go with gift cards, a recent poll of teachers responded to these two gift cards as the highest on their wish list: Amazon & Teachers Pay Teachers. There’s no surprise that Amazon would be the number one requested gift card as you can order any and all sorts of class supplies, books, and tech gadgets and gear, but also teachers can get something for themselves if they wanted to. Teachers Pay Teachers is a website dedicated to content and resources created by teachers for teachers. It’s a giant shopping mall full of teaching resources, print outs, and materials that can be used in the classroom and is widely used by teachers nationwide. Getting a gift card from one of these options is like a gift that gives back because it supports teachers which in turn also benefit students.  

So there you have it! These are our 5 simple, yet meaningful gifts that are bound to be loved by any teacher. We hope this saves you time and energy from searching through tabs and tabs of gift ideas on the internet. If you found any of our gift ideas useful, let us know in the comments!