Skip to main content
Kite Day With the Kids of Western Village
| High Flying Fun |
It's one of the first things you do as an OC student.
Before your first classes, before you watch your professors act crazy at First Week Follies, before your first WPA Week . . . you make a difference in a little kid's life.
Kite Day isn't one of OC's oldest traditions, but it's quickly grown into one of the best. Held during Earn Your Wings new student orientation the week before school starts, it brings more than 200 elementary school students to campus for a day they (and you) will remember forever.
When the kids arrive from Western Village Academy, a local "at-risk"; elementary school, you and hundreds of your new classmates greet them with a "high-five"; line so loud and long it makes them feel like they just stepped off the plane after winning the Super Bowl.
Then you go out to fly kites together. For some of the kids, who have a tough home life in a poor section of town, it's the most one-on-one interaction they've had with an adult in weeks.
"The kids love Kite Day. It's their favorite day of the year,"; said OC alumna Joy Rainey, now a teacher at Western Village. "When they walk in and everyone's screaming and cheering, that's a lifelong memory for them and they will never forget it.";
Rainey is the catalyst for OC's continued relationship with Western Village. Each year, Kite Day kicks off a program that sees hundreds of OC students volunteer one hour a week to mentor the Western Village kids. Rainey started mentoring as an OC student and now is the program's biggest recruiter and advocate.
As mentors, OC students help Western Village students with whatever they most need to work on - whether it be English, math or something else. That mentoring time often includes play time or simply the chance for the kids to have someone sit and listen to them . . . something they might not get at home.
"A lot of our kids have emotional problems or have a hard time socializing,"; Rainey said. "That mentor is a special person who can come and just focus time on that one student. It helps the kids emotionally, socially and academically. It makes them feel special to know they have that one person they can count on.";
A lot of times, that one-on-one relationship lasts more than a year.
"The best way we know it has a positive effect is we have students who start the program their freshman year and don't stop until they're finished at OC,"; Dean of Students Neil Arter said. "They keep going back because they're seeing a difference. They want to keep being a part of it.";
It is making a difference. Beyond the kids' increased confidence and better behavior in the classroom, Kite Day and the after-school mentoring program have helped Western Village make dramatic improvement on state-mandated standardized tests. Now Western Village is poised to go off that dreaded "at-risk"; list.
"The mentoring program is a big piece of what we need to raise our test scores. We've made continual gains and it's a huge morale booster for our staff,"; Western Village Principal Peggy Brinson said. "It's a win-win situation. Our kids get as much from it as your students do.";
Brinson also loves that it gives her students a sense of tradition in their topsy-turvy lives. And that tradition also has a positive impact on OC.
"Our students understand what it means to serve other people and encourage them,"; Arter said. "It's not hard to get our students involved with Western Village or with Kite Day, but it's really special that they take it as seriously as they do and get as fired up as they do."
Faculty Facts
"I enjoy my job, and I feel that it provides me with many opportunities for service." Dr. Lee Anne Paris, OC Librarian, studies information retrieval and web site usability. She has published articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship and Information Processing and Management. Dr. Paris speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, and a little Italian.
Read More
