Interested in your opinion:
This year our students are not being allowed to bring in store bought or home-made Valentine Day cards. The principal decided that everything should focus on friendship and if any cards are done they are done at school in connection with an academic lesson. Part of her reasoning is that not all kids can afford V-day cards. However, all of as teachers always give students the option to do them at school and we buy them for them. We have always told students Valentine's cards are optional but if you bring one, then you bring one for everyone. For some of our students (mostly special need students), this is the only time during the year they get something like this from others and it is very exciting for them. They take those little store bought Valentine cards to heart and feel like a million bucks.
What I did this year is have my students randomly pick 6 names and make cards with caring compliments in them. I think it has really worked nice. Each child will get 6 nice cards that someone took the time to write to them a special note.
While I thinks the kids will be happy enough, I still would prefer to do it the other way. Kids have fun handing them out, they enjoy reading all of the funny jokes, and I could still do this other activity, maybe at another time.
Curious to know what others think...
This year our students are not being allowed to bring in store bought or home-made Valentine Day cards. The principal decided that everything should focus on friendship and if any cards are done they are done at school in connection with an academic lesson. Part of her reasoning is that not all kids can afford V-day cards. However, all of as teachers always give students the option to do them at school and we buy them for them. We have always told students Valentine's cards are optional but if you bring one, then you bring one for everyone. For some of our students (mostly special need students), this is the only time during the year they get something like this from others and it is very exciting for them. They take those little store bought Valentine cards to heart and feel like a million bucks.
What I did this year is have my students randomly pick 6 names and make cards with caring compliments in them. I think it has really worked nice. Each child will get 6 nice cards that someone took the time to write to them a special note.
While I thinks the kids will be happy enough, I still would prefer to do it the other way. Kids have fun handing them out, they enjoy reading all of the funny jokes, and I could still do this other activity, maybe at another time.
Curious to know what others think...