It happened everywhere, on campuses large and small, public and private, elementary to secondary, in more than 2,163 schools nationwide—as well as at international schools in Poland, India, Kyrgyzstan, United Arab Emirates and beyond. Mix It Up at Lunch Day was Tuesday, Oct. 18.
Some events went smoothly, while others may have felt awkward. If your event felt awkward, don’t worry; that’s part of the process of change, and you should see it as an incentive to keep at it. This work is not easy, but it is vital.
Mix It Up is a decade-long Teaching Tolerance effort to help students identify, question and cross social boundaries. One 12-year-old California seventh-grader described Mix It Up’s core message in words anyone could understand: “Be nice to each other. Be open, and don’t hurt other people’s feelings.”
At that 12-year-old’s school in Walnut, Calif., a flash mob surprised students to kick off the Mix It Up celebration.
At a first-time event in Indiana, classmates played Diversity Bingo on a campus where two high schools had merged, an effort to ease tension and conflict based on race and prior school affiliation.
In western Maine, the state attorney general’s school and curriculum coordinator, Brandon Baldwin, visited an elementary school, saying he promotes Mix It Up “every year as a good civil rights team initiative.”
And we got letters from all over like this one, which came from a school for students with mental health issues:
“They don't do well with transitions, so for the past three days I told them that they would be having a Mix It Up lunch and would be eating with peers who were born in the same month. This created a lot of questioning among them to find out who they would eat with. Several students warned me that they would not eat with anyone but their classmates. When the time came, everyone entered the cafeteria and looked for the sign with their birth month. Staff worked to help them become engaged in conversations. It was a noisy room, but the kids all enjoyed themselves and asked when we could do it again. This is a start which will continue with special lunches scheduled monthly.”
All these different events were organized by students and teachers, school counselors and social workers—by anyone, really, with an interest in helping students learn to interact across group lines.
In Kansas, a school counselor stood by to help urge the students to mingle. “But,” he said, “it looks like the kids are doing well on their own.”
About 52 percent of schools who registered for Mix It Up this year told us they were planning to hold all Mix activities in a single day. Others plan to spread activities over a week, a month, a semester or the entire school year.
We have a vital message for those with the one-day plan: Our 10 years of experience with Mix It Up has shown us that lessons are learned more deeply and change happens more fully if you hold at least two other Mix It Up-style events during the year.
The easy approach? Just hold two additional Mix It Up at Lunch days—one in the winter and another in the spring. Build on the success of the initial event, expand the planning group and challenge students to mix things up even more.
Another approach? Tie your second and third Mix It Up event to other campaigns later in the year. No-Name Calling Week and the Day of Silence are two such opportunities.
And if you missed the Oct. 18 event, don’t worry. Start planning a Mix It Up event on a day later this semester—and let us know how it goes! It’s easy to contact us, just join us on the web, on Facebook or on Twitter.
Willoughby is a former managing editor of Teaching Tolerance
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