We provide a luncheon for our teachers & staff at the beginning of each year. We received a thank you from every single one of them.
Over the course of the year we receive various thank yous for different things that we do.
We take these thank yous and stick them up on our PTO bulletin board in the hallway. If you can do that maybe you should try it. Maybe it would show those other teachers that someone thought enough to send you a thank you note and it possibly could catch on.
We must have some faculty member in charge of this kind of thing because we get thank-you's often from "the entire faculty" so someone must be in charge of thanking us...
Shelly
I do think that written thank you notes are generally pretty few and far between. And at our school, we're all hard pressed to remember a time when a teacher said something to us directly. We have a teacher representative who comes to our meetings every month, though, and she always makes it a point to pass along comments that she has heard from individual teachers about how much they enjoyed something we did, so that's been really great for us. In April, during Volunteer Appreciation Week, the teachers and staff always put together a very nice lunch for the volunteers, so that's good, too (and no, now that I think of it, I don't think any of the volunteers write notes to the teachers to thank them...).
Anyway, maybe if you had one teacher as a liaison to the PTO the way we do, you could get comments back that way. Works for us.
Do you yourself attend any of these luncheons/buffets? If you do, don't you hear any "thankyous"? If you don't attend them, maybe you should. I'd bet that your PTO is appreciated way more than you think. Unfortunately, we live in a very busy world (I know I'm not telling you anything new) and in some instances "thankyou notes" just don't happen like they used to. The "good-ole' days thing, I know, but it's true. In an effort to be the bigger person, sometimes I ask myself or others with similiar complaints, why are we really doing this? If we don't get the little thankyous, does what we're doing mean any less? Thankyous are nice but I'm afraid my friends they need to be put on the endangered species list. Appreciate them when you get 'em and just trudge on when you don't. Look at the bigger picture. You are getting to know these teachers/staff on a more personal level than most parents, which we all know has it's pay-offs from time to time. And by the way, thanks for all you do! [img]smile.gif[/img]
If you are wanting to be subtle, try reading the one Thank You note at the next meeting. After you read it, give your numbers: How many parents participated; how many teachers and staff members ate; how many Thank You notes were received. Look the teacher who did write it in the eye and say "Thank You for taking the time to let us know you appreciated what we did" and let it go at that...
Maybe I am getting burnt out, but I am relaly disturbed about somehting and wanted others opinions.
Our PTO is very active, and raise lots of money for the school. Every year we give a Holiday Luncheon for the teachers. We get volunteers to bring in items of food so they can have a vuffet lunch, and snakcs for all day (usually enough food for days). We set up and take down etc.. This year we had a breakfast buffet, with everything under the sun etc.. Though out of 90 faculty members the PTO received one PTO from one teacher. this floors me and I know I am going ot say somehting at our PTO meeting, but how do I address this, in a nice but meaningful way? There are so many times we do not feel appreciated at all!
