Mom's of middle schoolers.. quick question.. 6th grade

I get each teacher a really nice chocolate bar.
Her homeroom teacher gets a nice gift but we are also friends outside of school.
When my boys went to middle school I got the teachers nothing.

I don’t know why you would single out the homeroom teacher.

Here homeroom isn’t anything. Homeroom is for you to be supervised while the announcements are made and maybe have a few minutes to work on homework. The teacher doesn’t teach anything in homeroom.

If you’re going to do gift I would do for everyone except homeroom, definitely not homeroom only.

My dd is also starting 6 next week .

She did rotating teachers in gr 5. We did gift for each teacher. Something small.

She has 8 teachers in gr 6. Luckily the parent association collects money and they have a system for Xmas gifts.

They take the bulk of the money and do a nicer gift for the main academic teachers for gr 6. Then they take $5 and give to each specialty teacher pool (as the specialty teachers teach many grades so therefore get $5 from most grades 1-7). It works out nicely. They collect $100 from each student in sept to cover all teacher gifts - Xmas and June. .

In gr 8, when dd started with 8 teachers and the parent association didn’t do a collection, I gave something small. But I think that was the last year I’ll do that.

My daughter has the same homeroom teacher all three years of middle school, so yes we always remember her. We also give gifts to all her other subject teachers (7 total this year). We usually don't give anything to their "specials" teachers unless there is one she absolutely adores.

Nope. Once they hit middle school there are no teacher gifts.

This wasn't true for the middle school where I taught for 25 years.  We were in quads and basically shared around 100 students- each teacher taught a different subject.  So we taught HR students.

With that being said, OP I rarely received a gift from any student who WASN'T in my HR. And it's very nice of you to do anything! Middle school teachers are often forgotten!

Honestly I don't do teacher gifts. At one point all 3 of my kids were in school and between the 3 kids they had over 15 teachers/aides that were a part of their school days. So even at $10 a pop its way too much money. So I just started putting together a snack tray or two for the entire staff at the school. Its cheaper and everyone can enjoy it, plus teachers (and all school staff) love food! I can say this with personal experience because I've worked at a school for 20 years.

At the end of the day, the staff lounge is usually filled with purchased and homemade treats. Most teachers just don't bring it home. (Some will though.)

Our homeroom teachers usually have the kids for a longer time and also teach too. Kids often bond a bit more with that teacher. I'd ask your daughter if she thinks there is a standout teacher for her. All kids feel differently about each teacher. Don't feel obligated to get everyone something. Teachers aren't expecting anything but always appreciate a nice, well written card. If you do decide to go with something for a particular teacher, have your daughter scope out his/her desk and see what she drinks or snacks on during the day. I finally spent my last Starbucks gift card last week after retiring 4 years ago.

I think I didn't do anything after elementary school except a gift card or homemade treats for dd's case load teacher (she had an IEP).

In middle and high school dd's school had SRT every other day for an 1.5, it was similar to homeroom but those teachers were mentors and really helped dd. And in high school they had the same SRT teacher all four years. I did send items to the teacher a couple of times.

At this point you leave it up to your child to decide if they want to gift a favorite teacher.

We stopped with teacher gifts unless they had a teacher that they really loved that they wanted to recognize (usually the choir teacher).

I did little small gifts for each teacher at Christmas last year, when DD was in 6th. However, she needs some extra TLC and she thankfully had teachers who were really trying to look out for her. There were one or two teachers who we didn't feel extra special about, just meh, but we included them anyway because at that point it would have felt rude to us to not include them.

This year she's in 7th and I haven't yet heard of any teachers who are really going the extra, extra mile for her. (Again, this is not an insult, I am actually very happy with her teachers in general thus far.) If Christmas was happening next week, I'd probably just have her make a nice card or something for them. We try to send little things they need for the classrooms during the year anyway, and always buy them books off their Book Fair request list.

My son gives each teacher a $10 Starbucks card with a thank you note at Christmas & again at the end of the year.

Here homeroom is an anchor class. Kids have the same homeroom and teacher and are encouraged to go to that teacher first if they have questions, need help or guidance.

However starting in middle school I let my kids decide if they wanted to do gifts and which teachers and what they gave. The gifts were more personalized and we included a gift card for practicality.