parents and teachers and snow days oh my!

i've seen soooooooo many parents complaining about having their kids home cause of the snow days. think about all the stress and frustration you're feeling, and how much you'd simply like to throttle them every now and then.. and then picture there are 20 of your child (or children) in your house all day every day for 180 days a year, in five-day increments.

now, if you can afford it, go to hallmark and get a nice thank you card and a visa gift card (even if its only five bucks) and send it to your kids teacher, and write in your own words how much you appreciate the time, effort, money, and dedication they put in to raise your child for 7 hours a day 180 days a year.

if you can't afford it, make a card by hand. have your kid make a card and then you sign it. just say "thank you." i can assure you, that acknowledgement of the difficulty of nurturing and educating other peoples children, at a 25:1 ratio--the fact that you took two minutes of your day to appreciate them--will mean the WORLD to your kids teacher. a simple little thank you note.

trust me on this one. it means a lot. im engaged to a teacher--and when she gets a nice note from a student or parent, the first thing she does is text me a picture or read it to me or bring it over. because it means that much to her, that somebody thanked her for the very difficult job she does. please please show your kids teachers that you know what they sacrifice and how hard they work, and that you appreciate it. not just at christmas or the end of the year. a quick note now and then. a simple "thank you for making the year go so smoothly for [childs name]" or "thank you for having patience with [childs name]".. if you can't think of something specific, just a general "thank you for taking care of my child during the hours i can't be with him/her" will remind that teacher why they do what they do. and t when they finally are able to stop grading papers and writing lesson plans and planning class parties and documenting their teaching for the government and the million other things they do every day all day long, that little reminder will also make them much more pleasant towards their fiances.

trust me. do this simple thing, a tiny little note! the significant others of teachers around the world will thank you for it, and i know the teacher will appreciate it too.