Back-to-School Business Cards

My kids had a brilliant teacher who used business cards as calling cards at back to school night. In fact, if she needed to send a note home with a child anytime throughout the year, she’d paperclip her card, which had her email address, phone, extension… basically all of the things you would expect on a business card. How handy is it to not have to look up an extension every time you have to call the school? Why aren’t all teachers using business cards? The problem of course is that typically the school budgets won’t pay for them.

This teacher had a simple solution: free business cards (I recommend these). 100 cards is easily enough for a teacher to give each mom and dad one card at the beginning of the school year, and still have plenty left over for notes and what not.

Since I’m such a great daughter, I shamelessly copied the idea for my mom, who is also a teacher, and designed cards for her as a birthday present. (Don’t worry, Mrs. Bills said it was OK.)

There are lots of free education templates available, but my mom wanted her school mascot on her card along with an emphasis on the sorts of things they’d be studying in 4th grade. So this is the design I made for her, with the details switched out for her privacy:

The back of the card is an excellent spot for a weekly schedule and a list of special dates through the year. Not every free business card offer allows you to print on the back and keep the special offer though — in fact I’ve seen some that print their own ad on the back.

But I’ve been happy with Overnight Prints. They -will- let you print on the back for a little extra; in fact their offer (which you can get here) just takes the price of 100 cards off whatever you decide to do. They also allow you to upload your own design without an extra fee, or you can choose from the templates they’ve got. Other reasons I like them: their cards are made from heavier stock, they come with a free gloss if you want it, and they can also do offset printing. Oh, and they’re fast 🙂

Anyway, my mom is terribly happy with the results, and I’m happy to have given her something she likes so much. I may even decide to create cards for my kids’ teachers as a gift to them as well.