A Pi-Full Night.

Pi Day is officially Saturday, (3/14/15) in honor of that awesome infinite number that never repeats in any sort of a pattern. We celebrated at school this evening with our second annual Math Family Fun Night.

Tonight's Pi Celebration began with family dinner - Pizza pies for all - as well as 10 real pies of all different varieties that our awesome Family and Consumer Science Classes had made.  Once dinner was eaten, families headed into grade level classrooms in which they played math games and generally had a great time. Teachers had planned engaging activities that were fun and easy for students to do inside or outside of school.  Cheers could be heard around the building as kids won or lost different games.

Our evening culminated in four lucky winners having the chance to "Pi" a staff member with a plate full of whipped cream.  Our first winner was the student who had memorized 135 numbers of Pi in order!  He was delighted; the others had their number drawn from a hat.  This years' lucky winners however, learned valuable lessons from each other - and the proportion of "plate smashed against face" time increased with each of our winners.  I was "Pi" eater #3 - my "Pi-er" added a nice circular motion to his plate on my face, and the whipped cream went all the way to my ears.

How do you define success for an evening like this? Certainly we collected data on the number of students who attended, pizza's eaten, and parents attending.  But, how do you measure the roar of approval from students when each staff member was "Pi-ed"?  Or, the chanting of the principal's name when they were trying to get her to take one?  Or the videos and pictures that are flying around snapchat and instagram tonight of school staff "taking one for the team"?

For me, success is the scent of warm whipped cream that won't go away because I forgot to close my nose. Success is the high five from the young man who "Pi-ed" me in the face!  Success is the awesome feeling of a community coming together to celebrate learning.