While many students have been learning remotely from home, teachers are still playing a critical role in educating their students. My daughter has a full schedule of Zoom sessions with her teacher three days a week and recorded lessons on YouTube for the other two days. Her teacher is constantly uploading and grading assignments, offering feedback and responses to her answering student questions.

Even though teaching doesn’t look the same, parents should still consider doing something special to acknowledge the teacher’s in their lives. My typical go-to is a small gift that my daughter usually presents in person, however, we have to switch it up this year. As I’m still thinking through what our gift will be, I wanted to share a few ideas on ways to acknowledge your child’s teacher virtually.

• E-Gift Cards: Gift cards go a long way whether it’s for Amazon, Target or even Grubhub or DoorDash, any teacher would appreciate being thought of by students and their parents
• Personal message or greeting: There’s nothing more special that a teacher receiving kind words of appreciation from students. Parents can send a greeting card or video via email to show the teacher how much they are appreciated.
• Artwork: Children, especially younger ones, love to draw pictures. What better way to warm a teacher’s heart than have your child draw a nice picture for the teacher in celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week.
• TikTok: Children are all over TikTok these days which presents a great opportunity for your child to film and post a TikTok in honor of the teacher. You can then save the video and send it to the teacher with a sweet message.
• Collaborative gift: If your child is actively communicating with classmates outside of remote learning sessions, you can work with them to create a collaborative video or photo collage with a message from multiple students as a meaningful gift.

You can do one or even all of these, especially if you’re planning to acknowledge the teacher each day of the week. With everything going on right now, it’ll be nice for teachers to know that they are appreciated for continuing to put their students first. I’d love to hear how all of you are planning to celebrate the teachers in your life. Feel free to share any new ideas in the comments.