Browse the gallery to see this year’s best holiday doors! Students and teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School participated in a holiday door decoration over the week of December 18th-22nd, 2023. The contest theme was The Best Roosevelt Way Gingerbread House on Raider Lane. This year’s winners were Ms. Ballard, Mr. Bradbury & Ms. Miller, and Mr. Patrick Gleason. Winners received the opportunity of a free day and a pizza party in 2024.
According to Ms. Holtz, who has been at Eleanor Roosevelt High school for 10 years, the door decoration has been done almost every year and hosted by someone different each year. Ms. Covington, who officially started it in 2022, loves the holiday season and thought it would be a fun way for staff and students to work together and show their creativity. She does not look for competition but more to having fun since she enjoys decorating.
Ms. Covington say’s it is important to her since it “fosters unity and creativity between staff and student’s by giving them an activity they can both do together just for fun”. Ms. Holtz, an English teacher, decorated her door with the help of her students. Initially two students that were done early with their assignments started to decorate the door, and as more students completed their assignments more joined to help. Their plan started as the student’s “used the whiteboard to make the design.” That was their plan and they followed through it. Ms. Holtz class is two periods long so they did not have to stay after school or anything in particular. Her and her students had enough time to get their lesson done and then use their free time to decorate their door. Ms. Holtz is really proud of her students as she said that it “actually looks like a gingerbread house”. That was their goal and it was achieved. She is happy to see that her students “really executed their mission for being able to make their plan happen.” Although she did not really go around the whole building to look at the decorated doors, she found “Mr. Bradbury and Ms. Miller’s door’s very impressive.” Ms. Holtz took one and a half class periods on her door. She did not take much time on it, as other teachers around the school as she said “It was kind of something we were doing for fun and I think we had a bonding moment which was great”.
Ms. Ballard participated this year for the first time in 5 years. She had her 5th period students help with gathering ideas. As she said “first we chose the pictures from online and then we used some from each picture to create a vision of what we wanted.” They did some research first in order to have ideas to work with. She is proud of how it lasted the whole week and how it ended up coming together in a better way than what they thought it would. When asked what she would do different if she could she said she would “probably start working on it a little earlier, we only spent Thursday, Friday and then Monday morning and to space it out a little bit more.” Just like Ms. Holtz she liked Mr. Bradbury’s door and said it was “nicely put together.”. She also loved the library and thought the decorations were very cute. One last thing Ms. Ballard mentioned is about her students, “The kids worked really hard to put it all together and I like how we worked as a team to come together.”
