Teachers Expecting A Bonus After Hints From Their Principal Leave Staff Meeting In Silence When They Receive Their Gifts Of Appreciation
"It was quite a depressed mood and probably the worst surprise delivery ever."
SDI Productions / CanvaPro With the current state of the education system, it’s no wonder that teachers are getting a lot of attention — from their work with students in the classroom to their personal lives outside.
Much of the recent debate in regard to teachers leaving the profession centers around salaries. Although pay varies from state to state, over the past decade, median earnings for teachers declined by 4.4% for high school teachers and 8.4% for elementary and middle school teachers.
Unfortunately, the decline in earnings does not reflect the job getting easier. Overworked and underpaid, many educators are speaking out that they deserve better.
Case in point, the anonymous teacher who reached out to teacher advocate Lauren Lowder on TikTok to share how administrators showed their appreciation for their hard work.
After the administration hinted at bonuses, teachers were speechless when they received their actual gifts of appreciation after a difficult month.
“This is my first year of teaching in Maryland,” the teacher said. “We were sent an email from the principal with fun graphics and a GIF presenting a huge surprise.”
After a particularly hard month, this teacher shared that the staff needed a little bit of motivation following the weeks of “craziness,” which included teachers quitting, and poor student behavior.
“There were rumors going around that this was going to be a small bonus,” she explained, “as a thank you for staying through it all.”
It all seemed appropriate — just school administrators trying to motivate and celebrate their teachers, with a bonus that they’d desperately needed (and deserved).
After an exhausting month of being understaffed and overworked, the teachers were more than deserving of a gift.
With almost half of K–12 teachers reporting “always or often feeling burnout” in their jobs, it would make sense that school districts would want to reward and inspire their staff.
So, following the initial email tempting teachers with an end-of-week staff meeting surprise, the school leadership continued to send “hints and clues” to the staff throughout the week. Each time a teacher opened their inbox, they were met with clues and hints that almost certainly alluded to “financial” or money-related support.
In a thread of emails throughout the month, administrators hinted at a ‘life-changing’ gift, something the teachers were hoping was financial compensation.
“Every day that week we got emails with little hints as to what it would be,” the teacher wrote. “I swear every single one was money or bonus-related. Things like ‘Maybe, you can use this surprise to make this year the best year ever’.”
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With anticipation, the staff meeting drew closer. Teachers had started to discuss the bonus itself — how much it would be, how many people would get it. With such clear “hints,” it didn’t seem presumptuous to assume it was financial support.
Some teachers were even opening up conversations in their homes and talking with their families about how helpful even a little bit of financial support would be.
However, during their staff meeting, they were surprised with a very different gift — an extra large bag of 100 Grand candy bars.
When the staff meeting day came, all the teachers flooded into the room. “There were little paper tents on the chairs, saying ‘take a seat and get ready to sit on the edge of it.’”
“After about 45 minutes of pointless updates, very bad puns, and a lot of people trying to figure out what was covered by a sheet in the front of the room,” the principal took the microphone to announce the surprise.
She recounted her principal’s dramatic speech, where she emphasized the need for a gift to celebrate the work of their teachers. Then, she ripped the sheet off the table, revealing "about two bags worth of mini 100 Grand candy bars.”
Photo: Jennifer Wallace / Shutterstock
While the administration at the front of the room was smiling, laughing, and clapping, the teachers in the room went completely silent.
As they filed up to the front to grab their candy bars, “All you could hear was ‘thunk, thunk, thunk’, as everyone threw away their candy bars in front of me,” the teacher admitted. “I kept mine because I hadn’t had time to eat for 48 hours.”
She later revealed that the principal was fired for cultivating an atmosphere of “low morale.” The actual moral of the story remained the same, however: teachers are underpaid, underappreciated, and undervalued.
They deserve more than symbols of appreciation. They need a comfortable wage, not occasional “bonuses” that sometimes turn out to be sugary disappointments.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango focusing on pop culture analysis and human interest stories.