We do several diff. things also.
Once a month we do a appreciation Lucheon for all staff.We have a parent that is our hospitality coord..and parents make dishes.We give all teachers $100.00 dollars in July to buy stuff for classrooms.
We then did a variety of things and made suggestions to parents for apprec.week..like bring in goodies,thank you notes,PTO bought roses at sams club and attached a note to thank them.
At Christmas we made each teacher and staff person homemade jelly and bread.
We have myriad things that we do during the year for the teachers and staff....In October we have a Bus Driver Appreciation Breakfast and Cafeteria appreciation breakfast. At the start of school we have a small momento for the teachers (last year a heart shaped cookie pop with a poem), we presented the Custodians with PTO sweat shirts at the start of winter and we do a Souper Celebration of our Paras and Secretaries in April. Finally we had the week long celebration for the teachers in May that was a biggie.
Our hospitality crew really does stay hopping. Each special staff like Librarian, Counselors etc get treated to a 25 gift certificate on their days as well as a program where the PTO advertises their TOP 5 needs to support their programs. That has really worked nicely an spreads the "wealth" of the celebration.
Needless to say, I do NOT want to ever p... off my hospitality chairperson. She does a ton of work!!!!
Our school only had an appreciation luncheon for the teachers this year that was sponsored by the PTO. However, at the beginning of the school year, during pre-planning, our principal and secretary had solicited donations and bought several really cool prizes that were given in a drawing during all our long meetings. Our principal felt like this was his was of saying welcome back and how much he appreciated all of our work.
The year before last, we had drawings every faculty meeting. We called it our Bear Hugs (our mascot is the black bear). There was a box by the teacher mailboxes and any time a staff/faculty member thought that someone had done something kind for him/her, they would fill out the slip of paper and put it in the box (they could sign their name or be anonymous). Those names were then put in a drawing for gift cards to local restaurants. Again, this was provided by the principal as a way to encourage helping each other and to build morale. Although our PTO started this year, we were not asked to help with the staff/faculty drawings. I think it might be a nice idea for the PTO to bring back next year.
Next year will be my first year as PTO Pres. but I have helped each year. Our Vice Princ. will be our new Princ. next year and wants to do staff appreciation each month and recognize different grades, assistants, etc. Our school has about 90 staff and will be adding more this next year. Teacher Appreciation week is alot of work to do everyone at once but then again I feel like we will be working all the time to do each month. I like the idea of seperating the groups and spreading it out over the year but I would like to know what your schools do. She really wants the teachers to feel appreciated all year and not when its on the calendar( May). Any input would be great.
Thanks, Sheri
