Here's a teacher gift

My pre-holiday email inbox was glutted with ads from every retail website I’d visited this year, maybe even this lifetime.  I got announcements about lighting sales at Pottery Barn, braided rug deals at L.L. Bean, top ten book lists from Amazon, cat toy specials, horoscope readings, pest removal deals, on and on and on. 

Most got deleted immediately but I couldn’t help reading a few, especially the ones that came with ridiculous stories, heart-tugging or just plain stupid, like how Jo Schmo bought this expensive  elephant legged/ cow-headed/ giraffe-necked end table for Blake Blah and how the table then saved their lives during a tsunami, earthquake, power outage, hangnail crisis, whatever. 

But I never read the emails about what to get your kid’s teacher. First, because my kids are grown. I haven’t bought gifts for my daughters' teachers for going on fifteen years now.  Second, I read one of those lists once, years ago, and it was about as pertinent to my life as an inner city school teacher as owning a Rolls Royce. 

A gift card to Starbucks? A Yankee Candle? A Crabtree and Evelyn gift set? Seriously? My kids don’t have that kind of money and if they did, I wouldn’t want them waste it on me anyhow. I don’t need or want anything from my students, except for this: that they become who they truly want to become, and maybe make the world a better place in the process. That’s a tough order and not something that comes wrapped up with ribbons.    

Many of my students don’t have crayons or books. Some don’t even have pencils at home. Many of my students are homeless. That is, they live in shelters or their families have moved in with other families. They bring their school crayons home when they need to work on projects because they don't have those kinds of things at home. They remind me that we need to pass out paper for homework, because when they don’t do their homework because they didn’t have the paper to write their essays or do their math, they’re not making excuses. That’s their reality.

Here’s a fact. Inner city school teachers rarely get gifts. Here’s another fact. I don’t want my students to give me gifts. I feel bad opening presents from the few that can afford to give something, because I see the reactions of the kids who can’t. They pretend to be suddenly busy reading or talking with their friends, or they ask what I got and their smiles are big and forced. It hurts them. It hurts me.

When my students ask me what they should buy me for Christmas, and they always do, I am straight with them: Spend your money on yourselves or on your family. If you want to give me anything, make me something. Draw me a picture of yourself, or make me a card. 

They say, “Really?” 

I say, “Really.”

But they’re sixth graders and self-conscious and tend to associate gifts with spending money not drawing pictures, so I’m not exactly overwhelmed with homemade stuff on the holidays. And that’s just fine too. I tell them the best gift they can give me is coming to school every day. Depending on the class and on my mood, I might roll my eyes a little or a lot.  They’ll groan and laugh and roll their eyes back at me too.

This year I got three gifts. Two were pretty standard and obviously parent-purchased: a box of chocolates, a scarf. The kids didn’t even know what they’d given me and stood by, more curious than me, as I opened their gifts.  

Then there was the third gift, brought in by a kid who wears the same pair of sneakers to school every day, who owns maybe four different T-shirts, who proudly showed me the two quarters he brought in on bake sale day because to have that much money at one time was a huge deal for him, who assured me just before we left for vacation that his best friend who just switched to another school is okay because he phones him every night to check on him. 

I found D’s gift on my desk that last morning before the holiday. It was in a small red gift bag with green wreaths, no identifying card or label.

I held it up. “Hmm. Look what I found.”

D had been hunched down in his seat, pretending to read. Now, he popped up, all excited, and made it to my desk in less than a second I swear. He said it was from him and insisted I open it right away. He hopped from one foot to another while I did.

I pulled out a small Christmas tin, and D informed me that there was a special surprise inside. There was. He explained as I showed the class. He spoke quickly and loudly so the entire class could hear. His cheeks were flushed.

  

“You know those bags of Christmas cookies you get at the grocery store? My mom bought those and we put some in here for you. We did it for a lot of people. We got those cans at the dollar store. They didn’t even cost a dollar. Isn’t that a great idea? You guys should all do it too.” Yup, he was teaching the class, gift-buying on a budget 101. 

Some of the kids said, yeah, it was a great idea. I assured him that it was too. Then he said the other present was even better. 

I fished around in the bag then pulled out a little candle, apple-scented.

D announced to the class that he picked it out especially for me. He got a real deal. It only cost fifty cents. “Can you believe it? Only fifty cents!”

I agreed that wow, it was a great deal. “You are such a smart shopper!” I said.

I told D I loved apples and complimented him on his thoughtfulness. I removed the lid. D and I took turns sniffing the candle.

“See? It smells just like apple,” D said.

“Wow, it DOES smell just like apple,” I said. 

A couple of kids came up to the desk. They wanted to smell it too. They said things like, “Wow! That smells really nice.”

You should have seen the smile on D’s face, the sparkle in his eyes, as he watched his classmates react to his presents. Now that was a gift.  

Here are the other gifts D gave me.