Teachers were eager to participate in YCHS’s 2018 Teacher Appreciation Week, or TAW. During the week of May 7-11 teachers were showered with students’ appreciation for them. Leadership students were the ones who did most of the TAW activities, but students will have every opportunity to do something, anything for their teachers.

A week prior to TAW and teachers were in high hopes. From what teachers have said about previous TAWs,  all of them have been great especially the staff breakfast. TAW’s staff breakfast last year was catered by Barrel 47, an establishment in Carlton. They had one of their chef’s come down to Yamhill and cook some of the food.

Teachers were hoping for some great stuff this year as well. Trevor Dasilva, the manufacturing teacher, said that he “hoped to see a BBQ’d lunch or something.” To his surprise, there were BBQ’d burgers and hot dogs on Friday the 11th. But the breakfast, in DaSilva’s opinion, was ‘the highlight of the week.”

Last year’s breakfast consisted of bacon, scrambled eggs, and Country Style hash browns. The Country Style hash browns consisted of fried potatoes with an assortment of different bell peppers. There was obviously more than just these three dishes present at this event; they were just the main dishes. Journalism teacher Rachel Henry said that “The food last year was excellent.” Many teachers would definitely agree with her since they found the food to be an amazing form of appreciation for both the teacher and the students who helped set up and take down.

Fast forward to the actual week of teacher appreciating and everything went off without a hitch. First, on May 7, students helped put up posters on teachers’ classroom doors. The posters had the teacher’s name on it and using the letters of their names as a sort of acronym gave each letter a nice characteristic or adjective pertaining to the teacher.

Nothing happened on Tuesday but Leadership made up for the lack of activities on Tuesday by having the staff breakfast on Wednesday.

The breakfast consisted of pancakes, sausage, bacon, coffee and orange juice. Nearly every High School teacher came down to the cafeteria and partook of the breakfast provided by a slew of different donors. T&E gave the school pancake mix and syrup and Carlton Farms donated 8 lbs of bacon.

On Thursday teachers received muffins and candy both wrapped in decorative bags. The sugary delights were delivered to every teacher during the first period via leadership students. To make it even sweeter, the leadership students personalized the treats, so each teacher got his or her favorite candy and muffin.

Then came Friday, when teachers were greeted by a BBQ lunch. The grill masters of this event were Principal Greg Neuman and Vice Principal Matt Wiles.

Overall this year’s TAW went quite well, without many problems. Leadership teacher Brenda Vanderzanden is already planning for next year’s TAW. “I hope to get more teachers involved and plan even more activities for next year’s Teacher Appreciation Week,” she said.

Until then, teachers will have to only dream of what might be.