We have had a number of people retiring lately and gave them various small gifts. But I think the principal retirement is a bit special. I suggest that we give him a rocking chair with the word " PTO" engraved on it.
When a beloved teacher retired from our elementary school last year, we created a memory photobook. We used the Picaboo service but there are a ton of other places where you can design and print something like this. ( picaboo(dot)com )
We designed pages with 3x5 boxes (to mimic a standard size picture) of various colors matching the theme of the book, and had a staff member sign a message to her in each - we would scan them in so it was a jpeg file and put the message on the same page as the picture of the staff member. We had her kids sign a piece of paper and scanned that in the same way we did the peer messages. We included candids from around the school and around her class and ended the book with a picture of the main school sign that had a good bye message to her.
It was a lot of work to collect the messages and scan them all in on top of just designing the book ... but the result was striking and so well worth it.
We have had several retire lately. We did a wooden garden bench that all the kids signed for a long time principal. Last year, for a teacher, we gave a strawberry tiered pot (for gardening) and a gift certificate to a local nursery.
When our principal retired we had a dessert reception. All the parents brought something and we had coffee and tea.Kids past and present were invited. We made a poetry book for her. Someone knew her favorite poems so we divided them up amongst the grades and had the kids illustrate the poems and then made a book out of them. She absolutely loved it. At the end of the event we had her read a book (selected by one of her friends/fellow teacher) to the kids one last time (she started her journey as a 2nd grade teacher). Seemed like a fitting way to end her tenure.
Louise
