“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” –Carl Jung
Looking back to my years in grade school, I can still remember how excited I was to go to school. As a teacher now, I now recognize that my joy came from the fortune of having brilliant teachers who taught me more than academic content and focused a great deal of energy on providing me opportunities to live up to my own potential. After struggling through my first year of teaching, I gained a whole new sense of respect for all the teachers that in one way or another impacted my life for the better. While I have done my best to go back to say thank you to each and every teacher that believed in me and managed to teach me to also believe in myself, I know that I will never be able to truly demonstrate just how much I appreciate them and/or demonstrate just how grateful I truly am.
In efforts to symbolically thank all the teachers that changed my life, I have made it a personal tradition to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week. In planning for this week, however, I have learned over time just how time consuming it can be to try and come up with a creative way to say THANK YOU. Thus, I want to share a Google folder with ideas and ready-to-print templates for your personal use as saying ‘Thank You’ shouldn’t be so much work (I already did enough planning, so why not share the wealth?).
Additionally, I want to share my go-to site where every year, I borrow ideas on different teacher appreciation gifts. Feel free to browse through or use the ideas in the folder above to simply get you started.
Our teachers are unsung heroes and while they deserve to be recognized on a daily basis, I encourage you to help make the best of this week and help make them feel special. Together, we can create ripples of joy — all it takes is for you to go say THANK YOU to a teacher and little by little, we will see the love spread.
P.S. These ideas are all borrowed from different sources and meant to be for personal use only. Please respect their work.