A Present for the Teacher

We all have teachers in our lives whom have fundamentally changed our lives, or our children’s lives, for the better.   We often feel a debt of gratitude for teachers. In the case of early childhood teachers we may also feel a sense of guilt too – as these people who play such an influential role in our children’s lives are paid so poorly and we want to show them how much we really value and appreciate them. The reality is though that most teachers have 20-30 kids in each of their classes and that there is only so many ‘World’s Best Teacher Mugs’ or other trinkets that teachers can accommodate.

End of year gifts for teachers are another social norm that need to be challenged but not necessarily abandoned. Taking the time to acknowledge our teachers is important both for us so we can express our gratitude, and for teachers to know the impact that they have made. But the ways in which we often do this needs to change. Just taking the time to express what a teacher has done for us, or for our children, is a wonderful gift. A simple card, or letter, expressing these sentiments to a teacher is wonderful gesture.

This year we wanted to acknowledge the teachers in our lives in a more sustainable way. The kids were still keen to give something and our two little ones are not yet old enough to write a special personalised note or card (though could have made an artwork). So fi we were going to give a gift we established some rules. Nothing plastic, and something that when it did end up being thrown out would biodegrade. Something that allowed for a little personal touch and ideally something that allowed us to contribute back to others in our gift buying. The idea we settled on was some small cinnamon wood Christmas tree decorations from Oxfam. Because they are wood we can easily write a personalised message on each decoration for the teacher.

Result – a small, personalised gift which conveys a lovely message and can hopefully be happily accommodated into our teachers lives (and gives a lovely smell to boot!) rather than being destined to landfill. But importantly, whenever it does end its useful life it will biodegrade. Another more sustainable gift idea we liked (but lack the time for this year!) is making cookies or something we’ve done previously – stained glass window biscuits (which could also be used as tree decorations!)

What ideas do you have to make acknowledging our teachers more sustainable?

Welcome to Clear and Present Danger

Image from John Henderson’s Photo Stream on Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Consumerism is an ever-growing problem. Sometimes our spending is rationalised under the banner of ‘economic growth’ but the reality is our obsession with buying things – our affluenza – is damaging the environment

Craig Reucassel’s War on Waste showed us the astronomical amount of clothing Australian’s throw out. He assembled a 6-tonne pile of clothing in Martin Place, Sydney and asked passers-by to guess how long it took Australian’s to throw out the same amount of clothing. The answer was 10 minutes.

Annie Leonard, whose film “The Story of Stuff” highlights the issue that in the US people now consume twice as much as people living 50 years ago. Much of the items we choose to purchase too have a very short life. Products have planned obsolescence built in plus, as George Monbiot writes in his excellent blog post on the issue we buy a great deal of products that never have any utility to start with – silly gifts bought on a whim that will end up in landfill within an obscenely short time. Many of the gifts we give this Christmas won’t even make it past January before they hit landfill.

Consumerism is the social norm in our culture. And at times it can be horrifying. Black Friday seems to be spreading across the world like a virus and anyone who has ever witnessed the crowds at the Boxing Day sales in Australia can see consumers gone mad. We must change our behaviour. Ross Gittins writes that “you need less than a majority of people changing their behaviour to reach the critical mass that prompts most other people to join them and, by doing so, cause an improvement in the culture”. Let’s be the catalyst for change.

Gift-giving is a big part of our consumerist culture. There is an expectation when your child is invited to a birthday party that you will bring a present. Indeed, many kids want a party chiefly because of the obscene amount of presents they’ll collect. Yet there is a great case to be made for deliberately trying to give our kids less, not only to teach them about sustainability, but to stimulate their imagination. And it’s not just birthdays that are an issue. At Christmas time, we often fall into giving gifts to all sorts of acquaintances just because present exchange is expected and we don’t want to be impolite. We often give our own families more than necessary too. We must remeber that the amount of gifts one receives bears no relationship to the amount they are loved.

Clear and Present Danger sets out to challenge social norms around gift giving. As George Monbiot writes “Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for god’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t.”

Come join me on my journey into challenging the sustainability of gift giving – one present at a time.