Fifteen Perfect Gift Ideas for Teachers

(A Teacher Tells Parents What Teachers Really Want)

I'm drowning in coffee mugs: Santa mugs, cartoon mugs, mugs that light up and mugs that make crude noises when tipped. The problem is that I don't drink coffee; I can't even drink tea unless I'm running a temperature and my mom's in town. Unfortunately, I happen to be a teacher. Like ties on Father's Day, coffee mugs arrive in alarming numbers as if from the devil's own kiln. We are left with a collection of cups that clutter our desks and cupboards like sea shells washed ashore after high tide. We use them as paperclip holders, pencil holders, candy dispensers, paper weights… and we know that more are on their way.

  In the beginning of the school year we'll receive them from family members and friends looking to wish us well as our new students arrive. They'll be followed by coffee mugs from our union representatives and another from the PTA. During the holidays and Teacher Appreciation Week, they'll come from our students and their parents. At various times throughout the year, they appear in our staff boxes as expressions of thanks from our administrators or from the people who take care of our pension plans. We'll pick them up at the conferences we attend and from the workshops in which we participate. Once, I even got one from the guy who delivered our new textbooks.

  Parents have only the best intentions, and they can't possibly know about this mug-glut unless they have a teacher in the family. As a teacher with years behind the big desk, I want to let you in on a little secret: if "it's the thought that counts," then teachers need to share what they're really thinking!