If anyone is looking for ideas for teacher appreciation luncheons, I hope this helps you out.We do several luncheons throughout the year: we bring in dinner for the teachers before Open House and our Cultural Night, because the teachers and staff do not get a chance to go home after school on these days. We also bring in lunch on the last day of school and we are expanding these to also include teacher inservice days this year. Each one this year is going to have different theme: Italian, Mexican, Salad and fruit,etc. Everything is homemade. At the beginning of the year we send out a questionnaire, including who would like to cook for different events. We then compile a master list of everyone who volunteered to do this. We are a school of 240 students, and we consistently get 50-60 parents who sign up to cook for the year. It also gives us enough people so that we are not asking the same Moms over and over to cook for an event. This has worked out really well for us.
Now for our big event: We do a huge Teacher Appreciation Luncheon during the winter to coincide with a day that is a half-day of school.
There are usually 4-5 of us that do all the cooking, decorating, serving, etc. This has been a wonderful event for teachers and staff and for us that work it. It has brought us quite close and believe me the teachers love this. We expanded the event two years ago when we got a new PTO board. The first year we went extremely elegant with white linen tablecloths and napkins, flower centerpieces (the teachers got to keep these),etc. We have an appetizer table ready for them when they come in and they relax and converse for about a half an hour. We then seated them and gave a toast to them with sparkling cider in champagne glasses. We then served them shrimp cocktails, next course was French onion soup, then lobster salad(Yes, We are in Maine). We then served a cup of sorbet to cleanse the pallete before the main meal. This was served buffet style, then while they were eating the main foods, we set up the dessert tables which was also buffet style. This year we went just the opposite with a beach theme for decorating. We bought beach towelsfor each teacher (Walmart clearance in August for $2 a piece. We draped one over each chair and they kept these. Also bought kiddie sunglasses at OTC and put a napkin in each pair and put it on the plates. Decorated all the tables with shells, starfish (OTC) and little drink parasols. We used white corn meal as the sand (looks just like sand) on blue plastic tablecloths (looks like the ocean). They loved it. This year we are going to go with a country picnic theme (yes we are even going to try to barbecue in 10 degree weather) but will also have many other entrees.
Our menu last year included: Appetizers-scallps wrapped in bacon, hot crabmeat dip, shrip canapes,hot artichoke dip, parmesian aioli toast, stuffed tomatoes, ham stuffed mushrooms, pickle roll ups, vegetable platter and homemade dips, almond toasties, stuffed celery, cheese platter,hot ham and cheese dip, and devilled eggs. Main buffet included seafood chowder, lobster casserole, spiral cut ham with dijon dressing, or dill sauce, roastbeef with horseradish cream, roast turkey with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoe casserole, herbed tomatoes, tossed salad, pasta salad, potatoe salad, ceasar salad, baked beans, homemade breads and rolls, blue cheese biscuits, homemade salad dressings (we also did chicken cordon bleu the year before). The desserts include lemon whip pie, french silk pie, grasshopper pie, cheesecake, chocolate bread pudding, chocolate covered strawberries, fruit platter and homemade whipped cream for all. (Can you tell that I love to cook?) There is enough so that each teacher and staff can take plates of leftovers home with them for their families.
If anyone would like any of these recipes just post it with your email and I'll get them out to you.
Also if you want a toast to the teachers this is what we said to them last year:
Every parent's dream is for their child to receive the very best education from wonderful and caring teachers. For the parents of (school's name) students, that dream is a reality, because our children receive that and so much more. Grace, courage, respect, hope, friendship, knowledge, and love are taught every day by all of you and by your example. Our children are the future of the world because our teachers make a world of difference. So pleases raise your glasses and accept this luncheon as a small expression of our gratitude. To all of the teachers and staff of (School's name), we thank you.
Hope this helps anyone who is looking for ideas for luncheons.
Would love to have feedback from anyone on other ideas or ways to improve what we are already doing. Thanks.
