Berkeley Review of Education

This reflective essay analyzes interactions where food was shared between a teacher and her junior high school students. The author describes the official uses of food in junior high school classrooms and in educational contexts in general. The author then theorizes these interactions, suggesting other semiotic, dialogic, and culturally encoded possibilities for interpreting food exchanges between teachers and students. These possibilities are contextualized using several stories that demonstrate socially grounded interpretations of food use, which contrast with typical notions of how food operates in educational contexts. The implications of these stories raise questions about how relationships are built and maintained in classrooms, what happens in reality when items are banned at school, and what possibilities exist for teachers as they approach classroom interactions in more strategic ways.