🍎 Giving a gift to your teacher: a 2,000-year-old tradition

Every end of June, the same ritual plays out in Quebec households: we rummage through drawers, check parent Facebook groups, and waver between a gift basket and an envelope. But where exactly does this tradition of giving a gift to one’s teacher come from? And how did it become what it is today?

Because there is a real history to it, and it is truly fascinating.

It starts... in antiquity

Giving a gift to the one who teaches is one of humanity’s oldest practices. In ancient China, students symbolically brought offerings to their master before beginning their training, often dried food, as a sign of respect and gratitude. In ancient Greece, wealthy families compensated their rhetoricians and philosophers not only with money, but with local produce, clothing, and useful objects.

The underlying idea was simple:

He who imparts knowledge deserves to be fed in return. Not metaphorically, but literally.

🍎 The apple: a very pragmatic North American story

The iconic image of the teacher with their red apple on the desk? It wasn’t born in a cartoon. It comes from 19th-century United States and Canada, when schoolteachers—often young, often poorly paid—were partially compensated by the families in the rural communities they served.

In remote regions, cash was scarce. So, people paid in kind: firewood, preserves, garden vegetables. And apples, abundant in the autumn in family orchards, became the default gift. Practical, nutritious, and long-lasting.

The teacher's apple was, at first, a real form of salary.

Over time, as teachers were better compensated by the state, the apple lost its economic function but not its symbolism. It became a gesture, a sign of gratitude, a metaphor. And in the 20th century, Hollywood and textbook illustrators did the rest.

The 20th-century transformation: from gesture to ritual

In the 1950s and 60s, with the democratization of public schools and urbanization, families gradually replaced artisanal products with manufactured goods. This was the era when the first "Best Teacher" mugs, pencil-shaped pen holders, and mass-produced small office items appeared.

The teacher's gift became a market, with its own visual codes: red apples, colored pencils, blackboards. An iconic vocabulary that says "teacher" at a glance, but which lost much of its soul along the way.

In Quebec, the tradition was also tinged with the culture of collective "thank yous" typical of French-speaking communities: class collections, cards signed by all the students, and small gestures organized by parent committees. A warmth that is distinctly our own.

And today? Returning to the essentials

Interestingly, for several years now, we have seen a quiet but real return toward something more authentic. Parents are looking less for gadgets and more for a gesture that counts. Something handmade, local, that tells a story.

It is exactly the same movement that brings people back to public markets, artisan shops, and local products. We have realized that behind a well-chosen object, there is a person who made it, a region that inspired it, and a culture that carries it.

And that is something a teacher who spends their career passing on knowledge, explaining, and giving meaning can truly feel. A gift that comes from here speaks the same language as their profession.

What we love to give at Arloca

No magic formula, no exhaustive list. Just a few ideas that take into account what teachers really experience: long days, heavy bags, and homes that deserve a bit of beauty.

An artisanal bag to carry everything one carries when teaching. An artist’s illustration to brighten up a desk. A local product for a well-deserved moment of pleasure on the weekend. A household item or linen made here, with character.

Simple, real things, made by Quebec hands.

At Arloca, that is what we are here for.

Arloca | 6572 St-Hubert St., Montreal

100% Quebec and Canadian gifts