Sophomore Ronald Batista hitting Adrienne D’Agostino with a pie. Photo taken by Julie Yu.
A National Honors Society (NHS) project group consisting of sophomore Sohaila Ammar and senior and Managing Editor of Photography and Design Jesaias Benitez hosted a Pie Toss event, where students were able to throw pies at their favorite teachers.
The teachers that volunteered to participate in the event were math teacher Cassandra Poole, health teacher Nathan O’Leary, music teacher Erin Mazza, and Italian teacher Adrienne D’Agostino. The four were later joined by art teacher Joseph Luongo as he decided to participate towards the end of the event.
The pies were priced at $2 for one and $3 for two. All of the proceeds raised from this event were donated to the Make A Wish foundation, which is a non-profit organization that grants wishes to children with critical illnesses.
Ammar and Benitez have been working on this NHS service project for approximately four months, but they officially finalized their pie toss idea about one month ago. Ammar explained that her and her partner “wanted [their] project to be more fundraising oriented,” which was when Benitez brought up the idea of doing a pie toss.”
Ammar explained that it was slightly challenging to convince teachers to participate after “the pie toss from two years ago got a little out of hand.” However, after contacting many teachers and circling around the building, the two were able to acquire four teachers, not including Luongo.
Poole was initially asked by Ammar to take part in the event. She explained that she always makes an effort to “try to be as active in the school community as [she] can.” Poole believes the pie toss was “a very fun and engaging way to raise money for charity.” She explained that “there were a good amount of students present and everyone seemed to be having a good time.”
O’Leary thought that this event would be “a fun bonding experience with the students and other teachers.” It was “a fun opportunity for students and teachers to interact with each other on just a fun level,” said O’Leary. He explained that “there are a lot of activities going on at this point in the year. I was still hoping there would be more teachers and students involved. There was a good turn out but I’m optimistic for more next year.
Mazza was asked by Benitez to participate in the event. She expressed that “Benitez has been a phenomenal student,” of hers for the past few years and she added that it was “the least [she could] do to support him.” Mazza also explained that this event stood out to her because “teachers [were] coming together to support students and a good cause.” She expected the event to be successful and as she already knew that some students were planning on pieing her prior to the event.
D’Agostino expressed that the event was “unique,” further explaining that she has heard that many students “like throwing things at teachers they love,” which made her and fellow teacher volunteers very nervous. She added that “there hasn’t been many fundraisers happening in the past few weeks,” so she was expecting a pretty successful turnout.
Ammar explained another project ideas they had was to gathering a group of volunteers to do a bake sale and using the proceeds “to buy bread, meat, fruits and veggies and make goodie bags” to hand out to homeless people in the Boston area. Another non-fundraising idea the group had was to gather “volunteers to do a park clean,” but they both liked the idea of having a fundraiser.
Since the group had less time to promote and advertise the event, Ammar “had low hopes,” but overall, the event had a “pretty good turnout,” which surprised Ammar.
