MixinG It Up

By Paterson, Jim

A national program sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center helps student leaders engage their peers in a lunchtime experience designed to help them meet others from different social groups.

SOME EXPERIENCED EDUCATORS and counselors believe that more things that affect a student’s life and change his or her perspective happen in the lunchroom than in the classroom. The lunchroom is certainly the place where self-esteem can be diminished or developed and where attitudes about others and oneself take shape.

With that in mind, more than 4 million students participated in a program in November to alter their views about their classmates and perhaps change how they-and the people around them-think about themselves. These students made the commitment to Mix It Up at lunch.

Mix It Up, which is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL, was started in 2002 as a way to get students to move out of their comfort zone and meet others from different groups. More than 9,000 schools participated this year by asking students to sit with someone they didn’t know at lunch for one day.

“We want students to identify, question, and cross the boundaries that separate them from each other- and we want to empower youth to create and sustain change in their schools and communities,” says Tafeni English, director of the Mix It Up program.

The organization notes that 70% of students say that the cafeteria is the place where social boundaries are most clearly drawn, and more than half describe their schools as “quick to put people into categories.” About half the students admit to rejecting someone from another group, simply for that reason.

Mix It Up is designed to tackle those problems.

“We have a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, and we wanted to help create an open, welcoming atmosphere in the lunch room where students would try sitting someplace new and meet people of different backgrounds,” says Pat Cunningham, co-adviser of the Principal’s Multicultural Advisory Council at East Lake HS in Tarpon Springs, FL, and an organizer of the event.

Cunningham says a number of student groups came together to work on the project.

On the day of the event, participating students were given a colored sticker that corresponded to balloons at a table when they entered the cafeteria. A discussion box provided sample questions to prompt discussions at the tables, and participating students were able to participate in prize raffles.

At Franklin Learning Center in Philadelphia, the program started with ninth graders, but was so successful, according to English, it was expanded to include the whole school. And discussions continued at the school after the day of activities came to a close

“Having a follow-up Mix event is integral to the school environment,” she says, noting that organizers should have an evaluation session after Mix It Up and plan another activity for the school based on those evaluations.

All the students at Sweetwater (TX) Intermediate School participated in the Mix It Up program. Posters about the program lined school’s walls, and students each wore Mix It Up nametags and bracelets. Students were assigned to tables based on their birthdates. Discussion questions placed on the tables helped the students get to know each other.

To promote the program at Chamblee (GA) HS, organizers put up flyers, did daily commercials on the Chamblee Morning School News, handed out information about the day, and spread the word wherever they could. More than 300 students participated, according to student Chika Oduah.

“There was a visible peace in the cafeteria. Students chit- chatted, joked, and ate lunch with peers that they had never tried to talk to,” she says.

Thurston HS in Springfield, OR, followed a similar process (see sidebar) although students in a Peer Group class whose members mentor freshmen were involved and extended the activities to include a discussion session during a Challenge Day program during which students from all school groups talk and participate in activities aimed at crossing cultural, racial, and status boundaries.

English says students reported meeting new friends and gaining a different understanding of other students. And that, she says, is the goal.

“It really works. It isn’t just about practicing boundary crossing and making new friends; it also aims to raise student awareness about the division in their schools. It gives students an opportunity to have an impact in their school communities as they identify the boundaries that divide them.”

Paul Chylinski, activities director at Loara HS in Anaheim, CA, says his school has continued the Mix It Up at Lunch philosophy with an annual activity in which all students participate in an effort to relate more closely to each other. “It now just happens, rather than asking kids to participate. We get advisers and students from all the clubs to buy in and participate and do something from there.”

Chylinski says the event seems to change from year-to-year. One year, teachers took lawn chairs outside and talked with kids. Another year, student groups armed with cookies and snacks just walked into different groups and began discussions. The school has also tried an activity called speed friendship-somewhat like speed dating, where students get to meet 42 new people in 20second conversations. “Everyone has a story,” he says. “Give them 20 seconds to talk and listen and a new friend is born. It is as diverse as you want it to be. Some years it is amazing. Others it is just another day with activities.”

Valuable Lessons

Ann Tenan, head of St. Stephens Episcopal School in Harrisburg, PA, where the entire student body of 160 has participated in Mix It Up at Lunch, says the lesson behind the Mix It Up program is valuable to students.

“I wish kids wouldn’t limit their interactions only to those they already know or to those who appear similar to themselves. However, I recognize that it is human nature to do just that. I do it myself?”

Tenan says that to be successfui, adults leading programs such as Mix It Up must recognize they are asking students to move out of their comfort zones, so they must help them get involved.

“I like the idea of randomly assigning kids to sit with a particular group. In addition to this, however, I think the adults need to describe to kids how they can start conversations with people they do not know.”

She says giving students questions to ask the people around them is a good idea, as is offering prizes to the students who try the hardest to interact with the most new people.

She worries that offering a Mix It Up activity only one day of the year makes the idea of getting to know new people “seem artificial and contrived.”

“To really make the idea stick, perhaps it should be held one day a month or even more often. That might help the kids learn how easy it could be.” She says having it even twice a month would make students very comfortable with each other.

“By May, there would be no one that a student didn’t already know- and isn’t that the goal of the program?”

Carol Lopus, former head of the school and now a teacher, noted that apart from large cultural or racial barriers that should be crossed, the program might just help a student fit in or develop friends.

She recalls a student who would not go to the cafeteria for the first week of school because he did not have anyone to sit with, and another who struggled in school until he was invited to sit at a table at lunch. And she mentions that the pattern is somehow ingrained-recalling how difficult it was for her elderly mother to adjust to seating arrangements in the cafeteria at her assisted living facility.

“There was all sorts of concern about who sat with whom, and my mother worried about it and talked about it. I guess things don’t change with age.”

Mixed Results

The results of Mix It Up at Lunch are mixed. Some students reject the idea of sitting with people they don’t know, but usually participation is good. Jackson says that word spread about the first session during a twolunch day and the organizers had to add several tables. She estimates that one-third of the students participated.

The challenge, schools report, is getting students involved.

Cunningham and Jackson had existing student groups that helped coordinate the event, and often student councils are called on to assist.

“It doesn’t have to be the right kids that buy in,” says English. “In most cases the event has been spearheaded by a group of students who are eager to see change in the school communities and who want to take part in that change.

Like Tenan, she believes teachers and administrators must be involved, and guide the students as they participate.

She also notes that Mix It Up at Lunch provides schools with activities to be used before and after the day and throughout the year. Classroom activities to supplement the program also are available.

The structure for organizing the day is explained on the Teaching Tolerance Web site at www.tolerance.org/teens/lunch.jsp. It calls for an organization that includes students from various groups to form a planning committee and choose an adviser. It recommends asking teachers at a faculty meeting to use some of the Mix It Up classroom activities.

A Mix It Up survey can help the students iden\tify social boundaries. The organization also suggests the planning committee work hard to involve other groups to spread the word and get other groups to buy in.

There are also tips on publicizing the event and holding the day, along with information about how to follow up.

A survey from last year’s events showed that Mix It Up at Lunch Day produced powerful results. Students became more comfortable interacting with different kinds of people and making new friendships across group lines.

The Southern Poverty Law Center began in 1971 in an effort to enforce the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It is perhaps most well known for its rigorous monitoring of hate groups. In 1991 it began the Teaching for Tolerance program to provide anti-bias curriculum and resources to schools, then in 2002 it began the Mix It Up program, realizing that much of the students’ learning takes place outside of the classroom.

One School’s Experience

On the same day, two groups at Thurston HS in Springfield, OR, had the same idea: to try to break down the artificial barriers that students put between each other.

Students who were participating in a study circle on diversity and the school’s Peer Group, which mentors ninth graders, began efforts to improve understanding among students. They agreed to promote a Mix It Up at Lunch program and a related workshop that same day that would allow for more discussion.

Here were the steps they took:

* Review Mix It Up planning and promotional material and plan the effort to get the word out.

* Advertise the program anywhere you can: in the school newspaper and on the announcements, at a teacher meeting, to parents in a flyer, with posters in the hall, and most importantly, by word of mouth.

* Use some materials (Thurston used wristbands, the colors of which matched tables covered in colored paper) to show which students are participating.

* Write conversation starters. Thurston wrote them on the colored table cloths.

* Have organizers and perhaps teachers circulate to help generate conversation.

* Provide prizes or other incentives for participation or notable effort to engage others.

* Hold follow-up events to review the effort and keep up the momentum with another program.

“In most cases the event has been spearheaded by a group of students who are eager to see change in the school communities….”

Jim Paterson is a freelance writer in Olney, MD.

Copyright National Association of Secondary School Principals Feb 2007

(c) 2007 Leadership for Student Activities. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.