Give my gift to those in need
TEACHER’S BID TO TAKE CHRISTMAS PRESSURE OFF PARENTS
A TEACHER who urged parents to give to their community instead of her this Christmas says she hopes other teachers might follow suit.
Louise Gardner, deputy head and year two teacher at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Voluntary Aided School, in Dipton, Stanley, decided last week to send a letter home with her pupils to “take the pressure” off parents to buy gifts for school staff.
In it, she said she was “really grateful” for the “generosity” of parents who send in seasonal gifts, but asked that they refrain from giving her anything other than a card this year. Instead, she said, anyone who wanted to give something could send in an optional donation of £2, which students would then use to buy food and luxuries for a local family in need.
And when mum Steff Ravenhall shared the letter Mrs Gardner had sent out on Facebook, the teacher was “overwhelmed” by the response as thousands of parents across the country praised the idea.
She said: “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I think it’s become a very commercial thing in recent years: there’s no expectation at all from teachers that they should get gifts, so I don’t really know where it’s come from, but I think parents do feel the pressure.
“Since become a
I’ve deputy
Louise Gardner head I’ve seen families who’ve come to us and said they’re really, really struggling. As a school we already support the food bank, but when you realise how much your own families in school are affected, you want to do something.
“People think everybody has and everybody can afford, but they just can’t.”
The idea to collect small cash donations came, she said, when teaching children about money in maths and noticing how few of them were used to actually seeing or handling money, as most parents use card payments in everyday life.
The 43-year-old said: “I thought that if anybody wanted to make a donation, and there’s absolutely no pressure, then the children could get the coins and count them themselves, and then we’ll take them to the local shop to buy the gifts.
“Because they’re only little they don’t really understand the costs of things, so I’m wanting them to start to see that some things are more expensive, some things are luxuries in life, and that you can’t buy everything.”
A mum-of-two herself, Mrs Gardner said she appreciated the strain Christmas puts on many parents and had wanted to do her bit to ease the burden.
She said: “I would like it if the idea helped other schools. I think sometimes teachers don’t know how to say something without sounding like they are not grateful. “We’ve got such fantastic parents, they’re so supportive, and this is our way of saying: ‘take a little bit of pressure off, don’t worry about us, focus on your family.’”
It’s become a very commercial thing – there’s no expectation at all from teachers