Tet festival draws hundreds to Star View Elementary School
Star View Elementary School’s Tet festival started as a small celebration decades ago in a teacher’s classroom, but the event has bloomed into a full-scale event for the entire campus to enjoy.
On Friday morning, members of Westminster High School’s Vietnamese Cultural Awareness Club donned dragon costumes and danced in front students, parents and teachers on Star View campus’ blacktop to ring in the Lunar New Year.
Tet is the Vietnamese celebration of the Lunar New Year.
“About half of my students dress up in Vietnamese attire, and it’s just been a tradition here,” Principal Jamie Goodwyn said about the elementary school, which serves Huntington Beach students. “About half the population of Star View is Vietnamese, so it’s something really special to bring to the school to share with them and their peers.”
Audrey Tran, a first-grade teacher at Star View, has organized the event since she started teaching at the school in 1991. Wanting to share her native country’s traditions, Tran would transform her room into an area that would encourage talk among all classes about the Lunar New Year and Vietnamese culture.
“I wanted to bring the culture and the tradition to Star View,” she said. “A lot of the students at Star View are Vietnamese, and it’s nice to validate where they and their parents came from, and I think it’s important to maintain that.”
Support for Tran’s event gained so much popularity that it evolved into a schoolwide assembly that is attended by hundreds of students and their parents.
“Every year it gets bigger and bigger,” she said. “This year’s event was the biggest so far, and it was a lot of fun.”
Goodwyn, who has been at Star View for four years, said it is important to celebrate Tet each year and continue the tradition that Tran has started.
“We celebrate almost all the holidays during the school year, so this is bringing in another cultural aspect of our school and making it a diverse educational experience,” Goodwyn said.
