What's with the penguins?

I have received two gifts already this school year.
A former student, who is quite the artist made three pictures for me to hang up in my classroom: one of a penguin with her face on it, a penguin with the face of her friend and my student for the third semester in a row, and one of yours truly's face on a penguin body. They are hanging up behind my desk. Why penguins? Because a long time ago I started collecting penguin pictures from old calendars and have many hanging in my classroom. No big deal about the penguins, but they sure are photogenic.

A gift from a student's family
5 years ago.

This morning I got a little penguin in plastic from another student who requested me for this year again. If you stick it in water, it'll grow up to 600% of it's 3" x 1.5" size. These presents come on the heels of some frustration with the admin who are putting pressure on the staff to reflect about their thoughts, find new methods to share, collect more data, and prove improvement. It's frustrating because what we really need, having adopted new textbooks, two of which represent new classes, is encouragement and appreciation for the extra hours we are putting in for the kids. We in the math dept. are working our tails off more since we lost one FTE (one teacher position), cut by the district so that we can better serve the students who have gone from a minimum of two credits in math to graduate to three.
There are no such things as budget cuts, the same work must simply be done by less people. Oh wait, the government has decreed that the teachers are at fault for students who are taking drugs, not lessons. The government has decreed that if the students who sit in class stoned don't pass the national or state exams we can get rid of the teachers and therefore the problem will go away because the government has solved it. It's beat up a teacher week in your state capital and your nation's capital so that the foolish decisions that they have made can be hidden.
In the mean time, the students still love their teachers, the actual students, that is. And they are willing to present these little gifts in appreciation.
Nope, they aren't little gifts. They're huge.