Fans of the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars are familiar with the challenge: Top bakers face off each week to decorate the best cupcake.
Seventh- and eighth-graders in Leslie Dolle’s foods class at Pierce Middle School faced a similar challenge. The assignment was to create an original cupcake recipe and decorate it according to a winter wonderland theme. Students baked at home and decorated together in class on Zoom Friday, Dec. 18.
Seventh-grader Verona Relan made a Black Forest cupcake with a cherry cranberry filling in the middle and vanilla frosting. She called her cupcakes “Lights On!”
“We could pretty much pick any type of cupcake flavor, but we had to make everything from scratch,” she said.
Classmate Heidi Bryan called her cupcakes — chocolate with raspberry filling and “a regular American vanilla buttercream” frosting — “Holiday Spirit.” She created a wreath around the cupcake with flower shapes on top.
Eighth-grader Chloe Caulfield made dark chocolate cupcakes with a marshmallow frosting topped with candy cane sprinkles, then put a candy cane on the side to serve as a handle.
Chloe called her creation “A Hot Cup of Cocoa.”
All three girls enrolled in the class because they love to bake.
Verona got a taste for it in sixth-grade life skills class. She also enjoys cooking for her family, including making Indian dishes with her father, Vikas Relan.
While Verona often cooks at home — and does a lot of baking during the holidays — completing school assignments in her home kitchen rather than in class is new this year due to remote learning.
This provides an unexpected benefit, according to her mother, Wendy Relan.
“When they go to school, we don’t get this glimpse of what they do every day,” Relan said. “It was really fun for us to experience it. We get more interaction with what she’s doing on a daily basis, which is really neat.”
Verona was looking forward to the assignment all week, Relan added.
Heidi couldn’t wait to take Dolle’s foods class as soon as she started seventh grade and plans to take it next year as well. Cooking at home comes with some challenges, however.
“It’s kind of hard because it was really fun last year when I was in life skills when we were able to cook in a group but now we have to cook on our own,” she said.
Dolle makes up for this, Heidi noted, by demonstrating for the class on Zoom.
Chloe, too, enjoys watching Dolle’s demonstrations. Her favorite part of the class is its hands-on nature.
“I know right now because we’re not going to school we can’t do as much as we usually would, but I just really like to cook,” she said.
This is Chloe’s second time enrolled in the class. She preferred last year when it was in class because she could see her teacher “because she’s so nice and she can help us if we need help instead of just watching us.”
However, in a remote setting, Dolle is able to provide a more in-depth example to the class, Chloe noted.
“We definitely can pay attention to how she’s doing it,” she said.
This is the eighth year Dolle has been challenging her students with Cupcake Wars. She keeps it fresh with a different theme each semester, sometimes based on a holiday and sometimes according to the students’ vote. Last year’s themes were outer space and cartoons.
“When school wasn’t virtual, students would compete in teams, usually with their fellow kitchen group members, but other times with their friends,” Dolle said. “This year, the students competed individually. This made for a lot of cupcakes!”
As an additional treat this year, Chef Freeman Gunnell from Cornwall Bakery in Grosse Pointe Park came to Pierce to demonstrate frosting techniques and gave the students baking advice. Students watched via Zoom and were able to ask Gunnell a lot of questions, Dolle said.
Next up was baking the cupcakes on their own the day before class, then decorating them live on Zoom while Dolle observed their progress.
Dolle said she paid close attention to the students’ proper mise en place — “getting the work station ready with all equipment and measured ingredients” — and made sure they followed proper safety protocol such as washing their hands, tying their hair back and not touching their face.
Each year, staff members judge the competition. This year, there were 32 entries and 12 judges. Dolle announced the following winners on Tuesday.
8th grade 4th-hour winners
1st: Chloe Caulfield — “A Hot Cocoa Cup of Cocoa”
2nd: Lindsey Kadanko — “Snow Day”
3rd: Kali Tsagaragos — “The Holiday Wreath”
7th grade 4th-hour winners
1st: Sydney Hoffman — “Sweet Slopes”
2nd: Alya Augsburger — “Polar Bear Summer Vacation”
3rd: Verona Relan — “Lights On”
8th Grade 5th-hour winners
1st: Lucas Bower — “Santa’s Milk and Cookies”
2nd: Harrison Lawrence — “Peppermint Hot Cocoa”
3rd: Cash Livingstone — “Scrumptious Snowman”
7th Grade 5th hour Winners
1st: Ella Andrews — “Spirits, Sparkles, and a HO HO HO lot of Sprinkles”
2nd: Heidi Bryan — “Holiday Spirit”
3rd: Caroline Ward — “Peppermint Snow”
Each of the winners received a prize.
Board meeting notes
The Grosse Pointe Public School System Board of Education held its last meeting of the year Monday, Dec. 21, giving departing board members Kathy Abke, Judy Gafa and Christopher Profeta a final opportunity to thank fellow trustees and district staff and administrators for their support. Trustee Cindy Pangborn was absent.
“I am grateful to our administration and our staff who has worked so hard,” Abke said. “One thing I know is that for every single person that works in this district … kids are the No. 1 reason they’re here. I know that as the new board comes on, for the administration and staff, kids are still going to be the No. 1 reason. As long as that remains true, we’re going to be OK.”
Profeta said his favorite part of serving on the board was when teachers and students presented at meetings what they were doing in the classroom.
“Especially during virtual learning, teachers are doing an outstanding job under impossible circumstances and I think that needs to be recognized,” he added. “… I want to wish the new board good luck and hopefully everybody will keep working together.”
Gafa, too, thanked the staff.
“They are the rock stars of this school district,” she said.
Action items
The purpose of the special meeting, held virtually, was to approve 2021 project costs for Maire Elementary School, trade bid packages for Brownell Middle School, the engagement of Noval Environmental as environment consultants and laptops for Grosse Pointe North and Grosse Pointe South high schools’ production and computer graphics classes, paid for with state funds as part of the Career and Technical Education program.
Approval of a tentative letter of understanding between the Grosse Pointe administration and Grosse Pointe Education Association was added to the agenda at the request of Trustee Chris Lee.
During public comments, Grosse Pointe Park resident Terence Collins urged board members to vote no on the first three items, which are part of summer bond construction work.
“Now is not the time to be planning for any additional summer construction projects given the disaster that was the 2020 summer construction efforts managed by Plante Moran and certainly not while our school buildings remain empty devoid of any face-to-face instruction,” Collins said.
Gafa responded to the comment by saying she would “be voting yes on this so that we can get our projects going and finished and follow the law in terms of how this bond has to be spent and when it has to be spent.”
All five agenda items passed 6-0.
Agreement reached
The letter of understanding, which will be posted on gpschools.org, is a nine-page document representing three months of negotiation between the leadership team from the Grosse Pointe administration and the leadership team of the GPEA, according to Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services Jon Dean. It was signed earlier that day by GPEA President Chris Pratt and provided to board members prior to the meeting.
The agreement “provides and explains the safety protocols we have in place which are consistent with our approved safety plan we’ve already had approved by the Wayne County health department,” Dean said. “It contains some details on working conditions such as when teachers are returning, how we’re going to handle live-streaming when a kid is absent for a prolonged absence and a variety of other COVID-related things.”
Lee said he understood many elementary teachers were teaching from their classrooms during remote learning and asked, “Is there a reasonable explanation why those secondary teachers don’t go into their empty classrooms and teach in front of a whiteboard and blackboard rather than teach from their armchair at home?”
“If you remember from the spring, we were under lockdown and teachers couldn’t even be in the building,” Dean replied. “We all worked from home. Starting this fall, teachers and administrators did have the opportunity to work from either their classroom or another remote location. We left that up to the employees as to what would be the best fit for them.
“We’ve had teachers from all levels work from their classrooms,” he continued. “It’s almost from a building level; it’s almost a cultural thing. We have had some secondary teachers work from their classrooms. But you’re right, most of them have been working from their homes. … We’ve given our employees that flexibility when necessary as long as they can still do their jobs. I’d like to really focus this thinking, though, on all of our teachers are coming back.”
Return-to-school update
Superintendent Gary Niehaus assured students and parents there were no homework assignments or upcoming assessments to study for during the holiday break.
He urged students and staff to “unplug from your computers and enjoy your time with your family.”
He also reviewed the schedule for students’ return in January in a hybrid model, with Young 5 through sixth-grade students and all students in categorical autism spectrum disorder and cognitive impairment special education programs returning Monday, Jan. 4.
General education students attend on alternate days while students in the special education program will attend daily, Niehaus noted.
Seventh- and eighth-grade students will return the following week in a hybrid model, with Cohort A beginning Monday, Jan. 11, and Cohort B beginning Tuesday, Jan. 12.
High school students begin at the start of the spring semester the week of Monday, Jan. 25, according to the following schedule:
Monday, Jan. 25 — Ninth-grade orientation day
Tuesday, Jan 26 — PSAT testing (no classes)
Wednesday, Jan. 27 — All students attend in a Zoom format
Thursday, Jan. 28 — Grades 9-12 attend (Cohort A in a.m., Cohort B in p.m.)
Click here for more information on student hybrid and remote schedules.
COVID ready
Niehaus also reported on updates to buildings to prepare them for the return of students and staff.
The district has contracted with Auxilio Inc., a company specializing in helping educational institutions meet their facility needs, to provide up to 30 custodial staff members to fill 10 vacancies and increase sanitizing and disinfecting protocols in the buildings.
According to Deputy Superintendent for Business and Operations Amanda Matheson, “This is just to supplement our existing staff so that we have appropriate staffing levels based on the added needs we have for sanitizing and disinfecting to be as clean and safe as possible during COVID mitigation plans.”
The additional custodial staff will cycle through the buildings and make sure touchpoints such as door handles and faucets are disinfected every four hours, among other sanitation protocols.
“This helps us to make sure that everything gets addressed,” Matheson said. “We can get through these frequently addressed surfaces and if there’s some emergency that comes up, that can be handled as well.”
The district also worked with an environmental air company to address the air quality in the buildings.
With professionally cleaned air handlers, increased settings on outside air dampers, increased motor speed to achieve a higher CFM, replaced dampers and upgraded controls, new filter racks and high efficiency MERV 10 filters, Niehaus said, “We feel comfortable in the quality of air and the flow of air and the way things have been restructured that it’s better than it ever has been.”