Teacher Appreciation Week or The Proper Use of Emoticons in Professional Emails

The first week of May is kind of a big deal to teachers. Restaurants offer free burritos to educators wielding school id's. The PTA ladies run themselves ragged giving little gifts with cutesy sayings. The superintendent sends the obligatory email saying how great we all are. If you're really lucky, your principal hires a massage therapist to hang out in the faculty room for a day.

For a week, things are pretty good for us teacher folk. This year, I even received an extra special gift from a parent. Typically, parents don't use the little face icons when they write me. Most of them realize that teachers, like other professionals, deserve a modicum of... well, professionalism. And that's what made this gift so memorable. In an email complaining about a grade, a parent sweetly ended his letter with that most tender of emoticons: a steaming pile of poop.

Yep, nothing says "We appreciate you" like cyber poo.