What started as a writing exercise turned into a feast of one-of-a-kind doughnuts for the third-graders at Clyde Hamrick Elementary School in the Fox C-6 district.
Each student designed a dream doughnut on paper, then turned in the sheets to teachers as they would any regular assignment. But instead of grading the papers, those sneaky teachers secretly sent them on to a local doughnut shop.
The students were surprised, then, when the custom-decorated doughnuts turned up in their classrooms a few days later.
“It was such a fun project and our students were so excited,” said teacher Meredith Guzman, who spearheaded the project.
Guzman said she got the idea from a fellow teacher’s Facebook post.
“The students in my class and the other two third-grade classes had begun a unit on opinion/persuasive writing,” she said. “We wrote an opinion piece about why our class deserves doughnuts. Their next assignment was the ‘Design a Donut Challenge.’ They had to design a doughnut, describe what it looks and tastes like, using descriptive adjectives, and then try to convince the reader why their doughnut is the best.”
As with many projects, the third-grade teachers collaborated on the doughnut challenge.
“The other two classroom teachers are Sara Helm and Elizabeth Jost,” Guzman said. “There is a fourth teacher, Danielle Menner, who does strictly all-virtual. Her kids did the design, but we didn’t get their doughnuts made because there was no really practical way to get them to the kids.”
The school administration agreed to finance the project, and Guzman said she contacted a few local bakeries. Co-owner Tracy O’Neil, 56, of Shamrock Donuts in Arnold responded enthusiastically.
“She told me her idea, and I thought it sounded like fun,” O’Neil said.
Once the design sheets were in the hands of the bakers at Shamrock, the project kicked into high gear.
“Tracy read through every single one of the sheets,” Guzman marveled. “Some of them were so detailed. One girl described an alligator on hers; one little girl wanted marshmallows; one asked for Sour Patch gummy candy. You can tell how much thought went into it on (O’Neil’s) part. She really wanted to make them special, and you can tell. I was blown away.”
O’Neil said it took a bit of time to look through all the sheets and decipher what the final product should look like.
“Some of them, the picture and the writing didn’t match,” she said, amused. “But they were pretty creative. One little boy wanted a shark next to a tanning beach. There were a few that called for flavors like cookie dough or brownies, and even some who wanted maple bacon.
“We did chocolate, used some chocolate icing. We went out and bought some gummy candies – alligators, snakes, all kinds of stuff – and then tried to match it up as best we could.”
O’Neil said she and co-worker Marge Coley took about an hour and a half to put together the doughnuts.
“We did about 65 of them. We had them all laid out on sheets and we just went down the line,” she said. “It didn’t take us that long to get them all done and sorted.”
O’Neil and her husband, Dan, opened Shamrock Donuts almost three years ago. She said she charged the school the regular price of $10.50 per dozen for the custom creations.
“We didn’t do a service charge or anything like that,” she said. “I consider it a small donation.”
Show and tell – and eat
Since Shamrock Donuts is closed Mondays and Tuesdays and the Fox C-6 schools were at that time doing virtual-only on Wednesdays, Guzman arranged for delivery of the doughnuts on Thursday, March 18.
“I picked them up Thursday morning,” Guzman said. “I had told Tracy just to put them in boxes and we’d try and match them up once we got them back here.”
But O’Neil and her staff went the extra mile, saving the teachers time and effort.
“She put each doughnut in its own little bag, then stapled the design sheet to it,” Guzman said. “It was so nice. That made everything so easy for us.”
Before they could dig in, students shared their creations with the rest of the class as well as a video camera.
“We projected the design sheets up on the wall and had the kids show their doughnut,” Guzman said. “Every time one went up on the screen, the room went ‘Oooh!’ and ‘Ahhhh!’”
That was the end of their patience, however.
“We wanted to get a picture of all of them with their doughnuts, but they were so eager,” Guzman said. “So we told them, once they presented it, they could start eating. It was an eruption of excitement.”
Guzman said the teachers enjoyed springing the surprise on their students.
“The kids thought it was just a fun writing activity,” she said. “They had no idea what we were doing.”
Guzman said she and the other teachers wanted to bring some light-hearted fun to what she called a “very bizarre” year.
“These kids have had a rough year,” she said. “We thought if we could do something that stands out for non-pandemic reasons, it would be great.”