It is the last week of school, or it is the week before winter break, and your kid's teacher has done something that mattered — got him reading, noticed the thing you had been worried about since October. You have twenty dollars and a vague sense that you should do something. You also suspect the teacher is about to receive fourteen candles and nine mugs and a lot of apple-shaped objects.
What is appropriate, and what is not
The note matters more than the gift and it is not close. Teachers keep notes. Ask any teacher over forty and they have a folder or a box of them. Write four specific sentences about what changed for your child this year and the twenty-dollar object becomes the packaging for the thing they keep.
Check the district cap. Many public districts limit what an employee may accept, commonly around $50, and some require disclosure above a lower figure. Gift cards over a certain value can create a tax question for the teacher. Food shared with the staff room is almost always fine.
Avoid anything decorative. Mugs, candles, apple ornaments, and "World's Best Teacher" anything arrive by the dozen and get donated by August. A teacher with 28 students can receive 28 mugs in one week.
If a class parent is organizing a group gift, join it instead of sending separately. A pooled $300 gift card the teacher actually chooses how to spend beats twelve separate $25 gestures, and it saves the teacher twelve thank-you notes.
What to send
If you'd rather bake it: mostaccioli before winter break, lemon in June. Homemade is accepted in almost every district where a gift card over a threshold is not. /ricette/. Write what is in it on the lid — a staff room with one nut allergy in it will otherwise leave an unlabeled tin sealed until Friday, and then throw it out.
What to write
- Micah started reading for pleasure in February. That was you. Thank you.
- Thank you for noticing the thing about Jonah in October, before we did.
- For the staff room. You all had a long year.
- I don't know how you do 28 of them at once. Have a real summer.
- He talks about your class at dinner, unprompted, which has never happened before.
12 more lines for this occasion →
Timing
For end of year, send it in the second-to-last week, not the last. The final three days are chaos and a box that arrives then competes with packing up a room. For winter break, the Monday or Tuesday of the last week is right. Teacher Appreciation Week falls in early May and is a real week — a gift then arrives with less competition than June. If you are shipping to a school, address it to the teacher's name with the school office as the delivery point and expect it to sit at the front desk for a day. Give yourself two days of margin so a delay does not push it into a Saturday, when the building is locked.
This page names no brand and earns nothing from what you decide. The bakeries that ship are listed alphabetically by state; our method is here, including what we would have to disclose if that ever changed.