Bake Your Teachers a Thank You!: A Blueprint

We all know how hard our teachers work, right? When people say that being a parent is the toughest job in the world, I think they may not have given teaching a hard and close enough look. Let’s show these teachers some love!

Baking Your Teachers a Thank You is simple (I promise), and with a bunch of parents pitching in, it’s a heartfelt way to show the school staff how much you value all they do for your kids (and if the baking is spread out over a bunch of families, it’s an easy way to spread a lot of gratitude!).

How to Organize a Baking Thank You in Your School

Here’s what you do:

1. Choose a recipe, either Chocolate Chip Cookies, Gingersnaps, or Sugar Cookies from The Mom 100 Cookbook, or pick one of your own favorite recipes.
2. Choose a day during National Teacher Appreciation Week (May 6-10), or any other day to designate as “Bake Your Teacher a Thank You” Day.
3. If you are looking for extra help: two weeks before the date, send an email blast out to the parent body of your school, and asking for volunteer bakers. You may want to let people know how many volunteers you are looking for, based on the number of cookies you want to bring in. For a sample email, click here.
4. 7-10 days before the designated date, send the selected recipe to the volunteer parents, along with instructions for dropping off the cookies at a determined spot the morning of Bake Your Teacher a Thank You Day.
5. 1-2 days before the date, make sure you have a large cookie jar or two or three (depending on the size of your school). Print the cookie label for the selected cookie(s), with a list of ingredients. Attach the label(s) to the jar(s) with tape.
6. The morning of Cookie Day, have a volunteer or two available to collect the cookies as they are dropped off in the designated spot, fill the jars with the cookies, and place them in the chosen spots where the teachers and staff can help themselves!
7. Repeat as needed! This has been such a hit in our school that we quickly turned it into “Cookie of the Month Day”, and every month families from a different grade do the baking, so each grade is only asked to bake once a year.

Pretty easy, right? And a lot of bang for your staff and teacher appreciation buck, I can tell you that. You can post your cookie photos to The Mom 100 wall on Facebook, comment at TheMom100.com, or post to Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest using the #BakeAThankYou hashtag. Even email me the photos! I’m quite chatty so you’ll likely hear back.

Cookie recipes:
Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chewy Sugar Cookies
Gingersnaps