Richmond-Burton teacher creates student-run bakery

Teacher Suzanne Johnson show students how to make pie crust Tuesday April 19, 2022, during a foods class at Richmond-Burton High School. She works in the bake shop and coaches.

Suzanne Johnson said her Wednesdays at Richmond-Burton High School begin as early as 3 a.m. in order to prep and bake fresh pastries for what has become a very popular business.

Johnson’s students come just a bit later, at 6 a.m., for no extra credit or reward other than the opportunity to help make fresh muffins and cinnamon rolls, the family and consumer sciences teacher said.

The bakery, which the students named Rocket’s Bake Shop, runs every Wednesday at a little table set up near the school’s main entrance.

By 8 a.m., almost all the treats are sold out, having provided breakfast, coffee and hot chocolate for students and teachers, Johnson said.

“Students and staff will walk in, see the table and tell me the whole school smells like muffins,” Johnson said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh my god, I forgot it’s Wednesday. This just made my day.’”

Johnson, who is from Stillman Valley, south of Rockford, is in her fifth year of teaching and her fourth at Richmond-Burton.

Teacher Suzanne Johnson show students how to make pie crust Tuesday April 19, 2022, during a foods class at Richmond-Burton High School. She works in the bake shop and coaches.

A fellow teacher at Richmond-Burton and her best friend, Stephanie Oslovich, who also is part of the project, said Johnson’s version of those mornings isn’t quite accurate. She actually gets in closer to 2:30 a.m.

“The work she puts in is insane,” Oslovich said. “She lives and breathes this.”

In addition to the bakery, Johnson teaches six other classes, including creative cuisine, where students learn about food from different parts of the country. She also runs an after-school baking club and coaches the school’s varsity cheerleading team. The many hats she wears has earned her the nickname “Walking Spirit Stick,” she said.

The idea for a school bakery came from a conference Johnson attended in 2019, where a teacher at Hoffman Estates High School noted how successful its bakery had become.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this would be a great thing to bring to R-B,’” Johnson said. “There is no other school in the area that does anything like this.”

Johnson said she collaborated with Oslovich, who teaches entrepreneurship, to teach students both the food prep and management aspects of running the bakery. In Johnson’s class, that meant testing recipes and figuring out what was feasible. The students became adept at working with recipes to produce a consistent product, Johnson said.

Teacher Suzanne Johnson show students how to make pie crust Tuesday April 19, 2022, during a foods class at Richmond-Burton High School. She works in the bake shop and coaches.

“We spent a good chunk of last year working on what this would look like, how we can make this something that would be successful,” Johnson said.

In February 2021, Johnson gave out free samples and announced the school’s new bakeshop. The bakery opened two days later, on Feb. 24, Johnson said.

In the long run, Johnson said she hopes to be more hands-off and let students completely run the bakeshop. Even now, Johnson’s students are very involved in the process, including preparing all the dry ingredients the day before. She’ll usually have around three or four students helping her early Wednesday mornings with the student bakers rotating from among her bakery class of 10 to 12.

The biggest challenge for the students, Johnson said, is to make sure to follow the recipes.

“They want to make sure everything is done correctly,” Johnson said. “If something doesn’t look right, we’ll walk through the recipe and figure out what step they missed.”

The menu thus far has stayed the same, except for a muffin variety that changes each season, Johnson said. This spring, the muffin flavor is lemon poppyseed.

The school board is considering putting in a space within the school where the bakeshop can be located and possibly opening it up to the community at large.

“She is always happy,” Oslovich said of Johnson and her teaching style. “She loves doing this. It’s something she adores, and she really gets into it. I can’t imagine Richmond-Burton without a bakeshop now.”