Have you ever walked in the same hallway every day -- or driven from point A to point B -- without remembering how you got there, who you passed, or what you saw?
As I prepare for Mix It Up at Lunch Day, I continue to see things and people that were once invisible to me.
One morning not long ago, before the start of school, I saw two students sitting on the main stairway, glanced, smiled, and kept on walking. As the days passed, I realized those two students sat at that same spot, as they did every morning, in the middle of the main stairway, to themselves. Finally, I started making conversation. I introduced myself, asked what grades they were in, what their ambitions were. They are two African American 11th grade sisters.
As I spoke to them, and really began to see them, it struck me: how many students are “invisible”? How many people in our school, adult and students alike, have blindfolds on? As we built our relationship, I began to ask my new friends some questions -- particularly how two African American students in a primarily Arab American school were viewed. (I work at Fordson High School, in Dearborn, Mich., where more than 90 percent of the student body is of Middle Eastern descent.) Thus began our journey to recruit a diverse student population for Mix It Up at Lunch Day.
I began to look “at” instead of “through” the school’s population. I found other teachers who wanted to be part of the project. The next step was to have a meeting with teachers and a diverse group of students.
We brainstormed ideas for the Mix It Up Lunch. Our challenge: How do we make the invisible visible? We have three lunch hours. We also have access to lists from teachers to help us pick student advisors: athletes, bilingual students from the English as a Second Language program, musicians from the band and choir, and students with special needs.
Our plan for Mix it Up at Lunch Day was to assign every table a student to facilitate. We brainstormed different icebreakers for students to use with others at their table. What would you rather have, a car without a license, or a license without a car? If you could be an animal, what would you be and why?
Another activity for the students is to circle up, with one participant in the middle, and ask such questions as: “If you’re like me, and you like pizza, switch positions.” Students could not go to the same spot, and whoever did not find a spot had to go to the middle of the circle and pose the next “if you’re like me” question.
We are meeting weekly with the student/teacher advisors to run through the exercises, find a room large enough to host Mix It Up Lunch and secure the lunch menu.
For everyone who feels overwhelmed preparing for Mix It Up at Lunch Day, my advice is to empower the students. They have ideas, thoughts, ambition and the ability to see what’s really going on. Advise them, encourage them and nourish their ideas. They teach me, and not the other way around.
Links:
[1] http://www.tolerance.org/author/norma-harb