May has been the month of appreciation, gratitude, and thanks at T’s school! And it’s been so much fun.
Don’t watch me write my notes, Mom!
T’s notes and flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week 2013.
T is ready to greet his teacher Mrs. W on note-and-flower day of Teacher Appreciation Week.
All the kids brought a different flower to the teacher so she could create a unique bouquet. This was one of my favorite ideas of the entire week. T said to me just now that if he could say one thing about Mrs. W, it’d be, “I love you.”
To kick off the thank-fest, our school held its annual Teacher Appreciation Week. This of course was chock full of fun activities for the kids to participate in and show how much they are thankful for their teachers. They brought snacks, wrote notes, gave flowers, and even went so far as wearing their teacher’s favorite color. T loves his teacher, so this was a pretty easy week for us.
T and his pink stickers for Teacher Appreciation Week. Pink is his teacher’s favorite color, so all the kids wore some pink on “fun Friday” for her. Aww!
Of course, when I asked what Mrs. W’s favorite color is, T tells me pink. Being encouraging of his full weekly participation, I offered to take him to get a new shirt, but only if he wanted to. While T wasn’t jumping at that opportunity (OK, so T’s not fond of pink much), he did jump at the chance to decorate his shirt with pink stickers for the occasion. Glad I had some on hand!
T had to recognize the nurse with a nice note and flower on School Nurse Appreciation Day 2013. After all, if there’s a boy who knows where the nurse’s office is at school, it’s T!
During the same week, we also celebrated School Nurse Appreciation Day. Yes, our school still has a nurse, which is nice, but she is only in on Thursdays and Fridays. Because of that, we celebrated this one on the Thursday (the official date actually fell on Wednesday May 8). As you can see from the photo, T kept this one simple and to the point. Thanks, Nurse N… and I hope T stays out of your office from here on out (no offense!).
We absolutely adore and respect our school principal. We are very lucky to have such a great leader at T’s school. T says, “Thank you, Dr. An!”
Though there wasn’t any official day recognizing our school’s staff, I felt we needed to give our Principal some special thanks as well. T agreed… actually, it could have been his idea… I can’t even remember at this point! Maybe because we both like her just that much. But the fact is that she really is a special person and wonderful leader to the students of T’s school, and we are grateful to have such an involved administrator on our campus.
Our school gave all the VIPs (volunteers) this nice gift at our VIP breakfast Friday May 18. Now I need a movie for that candy stat!
A few weeks later, the school also held its annual VIP appreciation breakfast. Sponsored by our school staff and the PTA, they welcomed all school volunteers (mostly parents) with a lovely bagel and fruit buffet to recognize and give thanks for our year-long contributions. It was simple and very lovely. The small gift also was very cute and clever, too.
T’s class patiently waiting to perform for us parents and then accept their certificates of appreciation for a stellar year of TK.
T performing part of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” with his TK class at their end-of-year classroom ceremonies.
T accepting his certificate from his school principal, Dr. An.
Yay T! Congratulations on one heckuva year!
I am a very proud mama.
C is a proud papa, too, and was so excited that T wanted to share his certificate and honors after the ceremony with him.
And lastly, this week we had T’s TK “award” celebration! Basically, it was a very small presentation by the teacher to each of the students for a year well-done. I think the kids felt appreciated, don’t you? Again, simple but so very special.
Our family is going to miss the heck out of these two wonderful women immensely. We wish them nothing but the best.
Speaking of appreciation, I feel I need to say a few words about our overall school experience this year. TK is a god-send of a program, and our school year on the whole has been a remarkable, incredible, and amazing nine month run; in fact, I feel this year will be a hard one to top. I really can’t think of a better first-year experience that T could have had as a young scholar in “the system,” and I could not have imagined it going any better for C and I from the parental perspective either. It also confirmed for us that one’s public school experience is what one makes of it. That means that if you, too, wish to have a similar positive experience, then I encourage you to please make time whenever possible to get in there and get involved. Volunteering with my child’s class on a regular basis and attending the school’s monthly PTA meetings, in my opinion, gave our family a leg up in enjoying our time this year both in class and outside of it at the larger school-wide events. It also doesn’t hurt to express gratitude all year long toward teachers, school staff, the principal, and other volunteers, not just during the designated days and events scheduled.
Our “school of choice” starting Fall 2013 through Spring 2019, or for elementary school grades K-through-5.
Having said that, I have an update regarding T’s school next year. If anyone is familiar with school of choice here in Long Beach (CA), you probably already know that it can be an incredibly stressful, crazy, and unpredictable process. In fact, our “choices” (both what was realistically an available choice for us and our own decision based on those selections) seemed to change daily over a 72-hour period about a week ago! With that, we are not re-enrolling at our current school next year, which obviously is a tad bittersweet given the year we’ve had. However, we’ve been blessed with another amazing opportunity that we are extremely excited about, and we look forward to it hopefully being our school community until Spring 2019. Again, we are grateful.
RMT’ers, how have you expressed your gratitude lately toward those who work in our schools?
Real Mom Time (RMT) 