One way to reward teachers is through teacher breakfast events. Holding teacher breakfasts before the students arrive on a regular basis -- once a month, perhaps, or twice a semester -- reminds teachers that their hard work and dedication is recognized and appreciated. Volunteer breakfast planners can be assigned to organize the events. Cafeteria workers, teacher aides and parents are often eager to be involved in the planning and execution.
At the end of the school year, recognize teachers for excellence in different areas. Be sure to recognize achievements both in and outside of the classroom. Serving as the adviser to school clubs, teaching after school extra help sessions, monitoring playground time and serving to monitor halls during arrival and dismissal are several areas where teachers donate their time. These "extra effort" assignments should be recognized through annual awards.
Professional development seminars traditionally focus on passive teacher learning. Spice up your next meeting by inviting teachers to share their own classroom best practices. Invite teachers who are especially innovative or successful to speak first. Public praise and recognition of efforts, particularly in unexpected venues, can go a long way to reinforce top performance. When you let a teacher model her best practices for others to implement, you are rewarding that teacher in a genuine, authentic way.
Yearly teacher evaluations are another opportunity for rewarding teachers for excellent performance. It is a standard practice of many administrators to set evaluation ratings permanently at the "average" level so that teachers continually attempt to improve, regardless of current performance. Yet, if administrators were to use these annual tools for rewarding the best teachers authentically and specifically in evaluation comments, those teachers would likely continue to perform at high levels. In a great many cases, excellence acknowledged is excellence continued.