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It was the sweet pie and pie Thursday at Vaca Pena Middle School in Vacaville.
No, not National Pie Day, which came and went Jan. 23, but the much-anticipated annual Pie Day, of whipped cream swirled on small paper plates and, in the hands of seventh and eighth graders, destined for the faces of teachers and administrators at the 200 Keith Way campus.
The noontime event — one day before Pi Day, the now-international celebration of the compelling math constant 3.14, denoted by the Greek letter π — served as a fundraiser for a variety of school activities, said three eighth graders seated at the table near the entryway to the pie-tossing area just beyond the gymnasium.
Nearly a dozen teachers, including Principal Colleen Moe, agreed to don plastic trash bags, goggles, and shower caps. For the students, costs were $1 to pie a teacher, $3 for school staff members, and $5 for school administrators.
Eighth graders Chole Houston, 14, Nevaeh Luzano, 13, and Ariana Torres-Valenzuela, 13, clad in sky-blue school T-shirts, sprayed whipped cream onto the plates and directed the students toward a row of seated adults who appeared cheerfully game to help raise money for school programs.
Among the teachers who endured the first round of pies were Chris Brusato, a seventh- and eighth-grade physical education teacher; Eric Forshage, a science teacher; Erin Sutherland, a history and math teacher; Kali Stern, an English and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination, a student-support program); and John Dolan, eighth-grade U.S. history teacher.
Dressed a red hooded sweatshirt, seventh grader Kelvin Govan, 13, confidently walked up to Brusato and slapped the plate onto his face, smiling as he did it, then, in a brief interview with The Reporter afterward, said, “It made me feel good.”
Govan was among the estimated 100 students who gathered on the outdoor asphalt surface to join in the pie-tossing or merely revel in the moments of one pie after another splatted onto the educators’ faces.
Seventh grader Leila Pauli, 12, pied Forshage, saying later, “I just did it for the fun.”
For the next 15 minutes, Forshage and Brusato, but especially Brusato, were the favored targets of students, taking more pies in the face than The Three Stooges: Moe, Larry and Curly.
Smiling, his face, hair and beard covered in white sprayed cream, Brusato said he took the hits because he is “the running guy,” the PE teacher who forces students to run when it comes time for state physical education testing.
And Forshage, likewise speaking through a face lathered in whipped cream, with only his eyes and mouth visible, said, “I don’t have any explanation for it.”
But he said he does have an explanation for pi, an irrational number derived from the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, or 3.14159265. Its numbers go on forever without falling into a repeating pattern. His students understand what it means, he said.
On Friday, other VUSD schools celebrate Pi Day, as Buckingham Collegiate Charter Academy did last year and for the nine previous years, marking the day with math games and projects requiring mathematical thinking.
SOME PI DAY FACTS
Pi Day is observed on March 14 because the first three digits of pi are 3, 1, and 4. It has been recognized by the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2019 UNESCO designated March 14 as the International Day of Mathematics.
Pi Day had its origins at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, founded in 1969 by the physicist and professor Frank Oppenheimer (younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Father of the Atomic Bomb”). He wanted kids to learn science in a hands-on way. Oppenheimer died in 1985, and, in his honor, three years later, the first Pi Day — started by physicist Larry Shaw — was held at the museum, now located on the Embarcadero along the city’s eastern waterfront, on March 14, 1988.
Eventually the Exploratorium added a celebration of Albert Einstein’s birthday. The famed theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize recipient, known for his theory of relativity, was born on March 14, 1879.
