Our PTO buys all teachers and staff members a small gift in December and we give it to them during the Teachers and Staff Appreciation Luncheon that we hold in the library a week before Christmas. Parents volunteer and they also bring in desserts and side dishes. The PTO pays for meat, tableware, and small gifts. Then in May, we have another luncheon for them.

We have 59 employees of the school to buy for so we try to keep costs down. We try not to spend more than $200 on the gifts.

Thank you for all you ideas and comments! I think we should try having parents bring in food. Creative and inexpensive. Thank you!

I believe in the teacher/staff appreciation, everyone in the school is equally important imo.

To simply address just teachers is not wise....why not reach out to your parents for help with the cost....homeroom parents could send letters/make phone calls to the parentsin the room and deal with it on a small scale.

If you are taling about food...why not have parents donate homemade food? This would also be a good way to invole grandparents...I have never know a grandmother who does not like to cook....

We have a staff/teacher luncheon during that week. We have a carry in from parents and last two years we bought fried chicken from a local store. It was fairly cheap. The parents usually donate some much food we have a ton. Then we buy them a small gift. We try to change every year. One year we bought mugs with our school name on them and filled with candy and pencil holders for the teachers. However we bought 150 mugs and that got expensive. Last year we bought gifts just for the teachers instead of including everyone. We delivered them on a different day. We also have a door prize raffle where we try to get a prize to everyone. The parents and businesses donate prizes for example, hanging baskets,gift cards,baskets theme items,candles etc..Just what ever the parents want to donate. This is alot of fun and the teachers and staff really appreciate it. We haven't decided what we are doing this year.

Then we usually do something for back to school-this year we did muffins on the first day and on our back to school night we made the survival kits--these were a big hit, better then the store bought gifts. We used felt bags and put their names on them.

I hope this helps.

Last year we need every month which got expensive. It ended with a luncheon for the whole staff and guests (the total was about 120 including the PTO members). We had PTO members cooked desserts, and side dishes, and we had the meat catered by a local resturant. The cost of the meat was about $400. From what I learn from last year's luncheon, is that there wasn't enough food for everyone. That the thumb of rule should be about 50 instead of 25 people.

So for this year, we are only going to do a teacher's appreciation during the four marking periods. The first marking period was the breakfast(orange juice, coffee, and muffins) that was a kick start to school. The second and third marking period has not been decided. The fourth marking period will be the luncheon at the end of the year.

I think that this is the best way to do it, it's not going overboard like we did last year.

When our school was smaller we covered recess duty for the week, but when it doubled in size we tried the first year and couldn't get enough volunteers to make sure everyone got covered so we just ended that. Currently we do nice things throughout Teacher Appreciation Week, but we include ALL staff. We have one day with a continental style breakfast(muffins, donuts, juice), one day with a luncheon($50 budget and parents supply practically everything), and we usually give some kind of little treat(small bags of candy, or little crafty item).

Some teachers moan about us not covering recess anymore, but most understand the volunteer issue and wouldn't want us to be able to do for only a few. As for luncheons and other treats, we feel that all the staff needs to be recognized not just the classroom teachers.

If your budget is getting out of control, maybe you can look into having parents supply more items. Ours love to cook for the teachers so getting yummy dishes for our luncheon is no problem. As for gifts, maybe you can start having the students make things at a craft night or even during your PTO meetings.