Oakdale’s Holiday Doors
January 12, 2022
To prepare for the holidays, Oakdale High School had a holiday door decorating contest. SET teachers and their students decorated their classroom doors for the season to be judged.
The contest was set up by Jessica Miller, a social studies teacher at Oakdale. The contest was supposed to “make things festive and fun, and give teachers a chance to bond with their SET classes.”
Much of the staff at Oakdale, including Miller, noticed, “A lot of teachers weren’t interacting much with their SET class and they wanted to help build that relationship.”
She continued, “So giving them a little competition and getting them out of their seats and off their phones and out doing something, they were hoping would be a good way to get to know their students.”
The contest was an annual tradition at Oakdale until the first year of Covid in 2020. Miller explained, “We have done it for years. We did it for probably 5 or 6 years before Covid started. We decided to bring it back now that we are back in school this year so that SET classes could get up and talk to each other and have something fun to do.”
Many of the teachers at Oakdale have different reasons for decorating their doors. Nissa Quill, a French teacher at Oakdale commented, “We are just doing it for the fun of it.” Christmas is a huge part of French culture and where I lived in France, Strasbourg.
Strasbourg is the part of France where Christmas is the most celebrated, because it’s really close to Germany and a lot of Christmas traditions come from Germany. It’s a really big part of French culture. To them, it doesn’t even matter if you’re religious or not, it’s just a part of their culture.”
Kate Ehrlich, a psychology teacher at Oakdale, added, “ I try to decorate my door every year, I just feel like it’s fun. And then I also usually use it to advertise one of my courses because holiday time’s right before people do their course selections, so I try to make it themed for one of the classes I teach.”
The contest was judged by the administrative team and PE teachers at Oakdale on Friday, December 17, 2021. It was announced that Jessica Miller and her SET class won the contest with their gingerbread house design. Oakdale hopes to continue the tradition and help teachers connect with their students.
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