Davis Magnet School kids help repay a kindness, raising funds for program ravaged by Bond fire
At Davis Magnet School in Costa Mesa, kindness grams cost $1 but are worth so much more.
Whether kids purchase and bestow the tiny notes and gifts to classmates or are themselves the recipients, the annual springtime ritual always seems to generate an abundance of warm fuzzies. And with funds raised each year benefiting a local organization in the community, it’s a true win-win.
But this year a group of students in the Peer Assistance Leadership (PAL) program wanted to make a special effort to help a program hit hard by December’s Bond fire, which scorched nearly 7,000 acres in and around the county’s Silverado Canyon.
Inside the Outdoors, operated by the Orange County Department of Education since 1974, is a hands-on environmental stewardship program that lets kids have an up-close experience with animals and nature through field trips and class visits.
Last year’s wildfire destroyed the program’s animal facility and all the creatures living there, along with an office building and an on-site caretaker’s residence.
For the past week, Davis students have been working extra hard to sell and assemble kindness grams in advance of next week’s campuswide Kindness Week, during which the notes of positivity will be delivered.
Helping Inside the Outdoors provided an extra motivation for sixth-grader Dior Harvey.
“They bring in animals and teach us about their surroundings. Last year, they brought these huge turtles and spiders — it was cool,” the 11-year-old said Friday. “It was a huge shock to everybody when we heard about the brush fire.”
Sixth-grader Marley Smith, 12, said raising funds for a group that helps schools is perfectly aligned with the principles behind Kindness Week, a time for everybody to celebrate being together.
“I think it’s very important to do it, because it shows kindness throughout the whole school,” she said of the springtime activities, which include allowing kids to dress in line with special themes while still adhering to social distancing and mask mandates.
“It’s like everyone coming together as a community,” she added.
Lisa Holman, who teaches sixth grade at Davis and serves as a PAL adviser, said kids have been selling kindness grams all week and coming in before school to help assemble kits. This year, recipients will receive pencils bearing fun designs and encouraging messages like, “Choose happy” and “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“I think the kids are just aching and hungry to give and give back and express themselves in a positive way, because the rug has been pulled out from under them this year,” Holman said.
Fellow PAL adviser and fourth-grade teacher Kelly Galen said many students, like Harvey, were touched to learn about the tragedies Inside the Outdoors endured during the Bond fire and wanted to help.
“Once I explained what the program was, my kids were like, ‘Oh my gosh!” Galen recalled. “It had a big impact on them because they know what that program has done for our school.”
For Stephanie Smith, operations manager for Inside the Outdoors, the Davis fundraiser is especially touching.
“We are speechless and so grateful,” she said. “We know we make a difference in kids’ school days because we bring them something different from what they’re used to. But for them to remember us long term reminds us that we really are making a difference in a bigger way.”
Dec. 3, 2020 — the day the Bond fire, fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, ripped through Orange County’s canyon country before spreading to nearside hillsides — is forever etched in Smith’s memory as the day she lost the caretaker’s residence where she lived with her husband and 14-year-old twin daughters.
Carrying little more than a cat, a dog, two backpacks and some laundry, the family narrowly escaped danger but suffered the loss of other family pets, all the program’s animals and the place they had called home for the past 20 years.
“That night was really, really, really scary,” she recalled Friday. “We’re really fortunate that we got out.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the program rebuild, while educators lead virtual lessons during the pandemic. So far, about 27% of a $152,000 goal has been raised. Next week, Davis students will hold a Zoom meeting with Principal Christy Flores and Smith to announce how much they will be adding to the cause.
No matter the amount, Smith said the students’ enormous act of kindness will never be forgotten.
“They really do want to do good things and share kindness,” she added. “They’re going to be great grown-ups some day.”
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