Regarding the gift giving culture that permeates elementary school classrooms these days, it’s fucked up I should be expected to give gift cards 4-5 times a school year to teachers for doing their jobs instead of being able to send my kids to public school I pay for where the teachers are paid enough not to need my Target and Starbucks gift cards to supplement their income. Plenty of people work for similar salaries and don’t have these expectations. Also it’s mainly a middle class and up school districts where this happens and those teachers are not dealing with the worst of worst conditions that lower class and poverty stricken schools and districts are dealing with. So yes we fall into the peer pressure of a couple hundred bucks a year to help our kid’s teachers out that my mom never got teaching in lower income areas. But my wife’s mom taught in nicer areas and thinks it’s the norm so then so does my wife.
/rant over