Door Decorating: Advice and Reflections

By Molly Burke
BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

As homecoming rolls around, the Davis High campus becomes a colorful combination of students dressed in spirit day outfits, and classrooms start preparing for the door decorating contest. All the participating fourth period classes are invited to creatively decorate their classroom doors to the theme of homecoming. This year’s theme is “Around the World.”

The student government visits every door and chooses the winners.

Last year, the theme was music and one of the winning classes was the HUB. Davis High and HUB alumnus Dylan Lee, who is now a freshman at UC Berkeley, was largely involved in decorating the HUB door.

“It was a stroke of brilliance,” Lee said of their decoration.

The door was decorated to look like a nightclub, and was even given the name  the “Night HUB.” The classroom even had speakers near the door, where music was playing throughout the hallway and HUB students were dancing in the hallway.

What advice does Lee have for other classes hoping to win the coveted spot as best door decorators?

“Go all out, you know. You only get to do this a few times,” Lee said.

Sophomore Grace Hickerson’s fourth period World Civilization class with Kristin Swanstrom has already had several discussions about their door.

“We’re going to put an inflatable palm tree and parrot outside of the door and have a border of Hawaiian leis,” Hickerson said.

Hickerson’s class decided to have a Hawaiian beach theme. The class plans to work together and decorate its door with an image of the beach, and include the participants names on it.

Spanish teacher Nicholas Salcedo said that his classes have always participated, but never done well. He thinks that this year he will decorate his door with a “Spanish or Latin American” theme.

He has some advice of his own.

“Go over the top,” Salcedo said.  “Just using paper isn’t likely to win.”

English teacher Ashley Hamrick has been teaching at DHS for four years, yet this is the first year her class has participated in the contest. Hamrick hasn’t had much experience with her own classrooms, but has learned tips from neighboring classrooms’ doors.

“Take the outside of the door in,” Hamrick says. She has seen many classrooms “go all out” on their decorating both on the inside and the outside of the door.

One the best doors she saw was created when a class built an Aztec pyramid out of cardboard boxes and attached it to the door.

Although she doesn’t officially compete in the contest, counselor Linda Preciado participates in door decorating every year. Preciado explains that she looks at the theme and tries to do something original for the counseling office door. Last year, Preciado did a motown themed door, with records with each counselor’s photo on them.

“We just try to be a part of it. We like to have fun, too, and support the students,” Preciado said.