Baking Club has grown a lot in its first year – from the brainchild of a committed student to a valued institution at ROHS, and its success is all due to the efforts and contributions of its dedicated members. But it wasn’t always that way.
“We had a really unassuming start, to be honest,” said junior Hailey Berry. “I was in Watzman’s classroom, and he was handing out cookies to the class, and I thought they were amazing, so I asked him for the recipe and made them myself. And he said, ‘We should start a baking club.’ And that’s basically how it started. We drafted a constitution, got Watzman as our supervisor, and that was the beginning.”
In the early days, the club’s officers had to find ways to spread the word about a new opportunity to students. Members posted flyers, and even advertised their first fundraiser on the Raven Report, but Berry believes that they gained the most new participants through everyday word of mouth.
From there, the members had to navigate the uncharted territory of getting a new club off the ground. Many contributed supplies, donations, and called upon their own baking experiences to support their first fundraiser: the sale of banana muffins during lunch periods.
“It really didn’t go well.” said junior Bree Voss. “We made about a hundred, and we only had a couple left for C lunch. But we were just trying [to get] our legs, and we learned a lot from it.”
This spirit of experimentation continued as the club grew throughout the year. Safety training days were introduced to educate new members on how to be safe and responsible in the kitchen, and other days were reserved exclusively for fundraiser planning. Some expressed interest in baking classes, a concept Berry hopes to make available sometime this year. She believes this would help members become more confident in their own baking skills and make the club less exclusive to those with prior experience.
With these developments underway, the club began planning for future projects, and slowly expanded beyond meeting days at the end of the school year with summer activities at Encounter Church in Royal Oak and a booth at the 2022 Raven Rally – a major milestone that earned them an additional surge of members. But they’re not done yet.
“I did this – we did this – as a family of sorts, and this is what it’s grown into. We’re the youngest club here, but somehow we’re staying afloat, people are noticing us, and we’re still getting bigger,” said Berry. “We’re working to establish our presence in the school.”
Berry says she believes the club will continue to grow after she graduates.
“It’s not just me,” she said. “It’s really all the people who have stuck with us after all this time. I think that it shows what students are capable of achieving and what they can do to make an impact on their school. It doesn’t matter how outlandish or small an idea may seem, it’s not impossible. You can make it happen.”
