The Halloween door decorating contest has been around for a while and has been a fun little competition within Santa Maria High. This year, around 14 classrooms decided to participate in this years contest with their own spooky designs. Classrooms all over campus ranging from the 600s all the way to the 100s have decorated their doors in the spirit of Halloween in order for a chance to win free Raising Cane’s for lunch on the day of Halloween.

Most of the classrooms that have participated were from the 100s and had some pretty freaky designs. For example, one Forensic Science teacher, in room 134, decided to run with the theme of “forensics/crime”. Mrs. Cowans decorated her door with a fake body wrapped in a garbage bag, bloody handprints, and a few shadowy hands as well as an outline of a body. “I thought it was fun because kids get excited [and] it makes school fun. We decided that we did not want to purchase a bunch of things and spend hours and hours and hours putting something together so we looked up crime scene decorations and got some ideas and made it work for us at school without having to spend a bunch of money on things,” Mrs. Cowans stated in an interview.

The winning classroom door was a chemistry class up on the third floor of the 100s building, where Ms. Zepeda went all out and decorated not only her door, but her wall too. Her door attracted many stares as well as “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” in the days it was finished. I have to admit, I was amazed at how much effort and thought Ms. Zepeda’s class put into their door/wall that I had to take a picture to show everyone I know. To decide which theme to run with for this year’s contest, Ms. Zepeda gave her students a few choices. “I created a poll and I chose different themes and I had them vote on which theme they wanted to do.” In her interview, Ms. Zepeda also admitted that the creative process was entertaining. “They (the students) had a lot of fun with it, they even wanted to do it for the next day even though we were done.”

Despite winning first prize, Ms. Zepeda was a good sport and acknowledged the other teachers’ creativeness. “It was nice to see how creative other teachers and students were.” Personally, my favorite part of her classroom’s design was the missing posters and it doesn’t seem like I was the only one. “They (her students) really liked the missing posters cause they got to see their friends or their classmates on the wall and they would always take pictures of them and send it to them.” Needless to say, winning this contest was big for both Ms. Zepeda and her students considering what they won. “It felt awesome because I think it gives the kids a lot of pride because they put a lot of effort into it and a lot of time, so it feels really nice to them. They keep asking me ‘when are [we] going to get [our] Canes?'”

Second place winner, Ms. Carillo’s class, decided to design their door in the theme of a zombie apocalypse complete with chains, boards and bloody handprints. I saw this door and was in awe of it because of how much I love zombie movies. I honestly think that this door was well put together and well-thought out.

In third place, was Ms. Van D’s room (yay!), aka her journalism class. We decided to run with The Ring theme and make Sammy the Saint the victim of Samara’s revenge. We ended up making it a manga scene with Samara popping out at the end as she does in the 2002 movie version. Making her pop out of the make-believe television was our biggest challenge but we made it work (sort of). “I think we all worked hard as a class to decorate the door. There was a lot of ideas and we tried to make all of them [real] which involved a lot of tape.” One of our artists for the Sammy the Saint freaking out panel, Rodrigo, commented in an interview that despite being sick, he still had a lot of fun decorating the door. “I think the process was definitely fun and you know we were able to get stuff done, we had our laughs and giggles in there.” Our beloved adviser and teacher for this class declared that we, as her chosen period, did an “exceptional job with coming up with the plan and executing the vision.”

Despite the many years of not doing this contest, many classrooms had fun decorating and designing their doors (and walls for some). Some have mentioned that this is something they would enjoy seeing more of in the future as a possible tradition or event for every school year to come. Something to get kids motivated into doing these types of competitions is free food or something nice. When asked why she entered the contest, Mrs. Cowans answered that it was because of the prize. “We were like ‘free food! let’s do it.'” Ms. Zepeda stated in an interview that events like these can help boost moral here at SMHS. “I think there should be more things like this, like competitions for Halloween or for other events, just to get the students more motivated and some sort of prize that motivates them. It also helps them bond.” Mrs. Van D also voiced her opinion on making this a tradition, “hopefully [the school/ASB] will resurrect this tradition and do it every year going forward.”