Today, Ms. Stephanie Kranz, the Calculus teacher here at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, N.J., and moderator for the school’s environmentally active “Green Bees” student group, left class empty-handed at about 9:20 a.m. to “run to the bathroom,” only to return five minutes later with two batches of cupcakes in her arms — disguised as pies — for her students in celebration of Pi Day.

Pi Day is annual celebration commemorating Pi (?), a constant used in mathematics — borrowed from the Greek — which represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It has an approximate value of 3.14159 — the date was decided by the first three numbers — with over a trillion digits more discovered, and is commonly used in Geometric problems involving circles.

Traditionally, according to www.piday.org, Pi Day is “an opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the infinite digits of Pi, talk to their friends about math, and eat Pie.”

Ms. Kranz donned to class a shirt that she made by hand. The front of the shirt bore the words “Happy Pi Day,” and the back, “Good luck getting a GPA > (greater than) 3.14 after my class.”

She decided to make pie cupcakes (which she accomplished by using frosting and M&Ms) because “I like my students a little bit.”

To her, Pi Day is a great day for “people to nerd out and celebrate the subject they love.”

Her students reveled in eating her cupcakes for the remainder of the class period.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Jacob Anthony Amaro