Montgomery Mixes It Up with Bingo

It was more than just a change of scenery for Cole Archer. Today, he moved from his usual center lunch table to the front of the lunchroom to sit with five schoolmates he generally only sees in the halls and in classes.

For Mix It Up at Lunch Day, the roughly 150 students at Montgomery Catholic Middle School in Montgomery, Ala., were given a challenge and an ice-breaker. They played a hearty game of Get-to-Know-You Bingo during their 25-minute lunch period. Seated six to a table, the students polled their new friends to find out things like who was left-handed, who has a pet cat, who plays sports and who is a middle child in their family.

The first table to complete the Bingo earned ice cream. But there were rules, like you couldn’t use a person’s name more than twice.

Audible giggles and “me toos” echoed throughout the lunchroom.

It was fun, Cole admitted, but also “a little weird.”

“It’s changing what you do every day,” said Cole, an eighth-grader. “It’s a little weird at first, but then it makes you want to talk more to the person you sat with.”

That’s exactly what Elizabeth Kelley and Madison Searcy did. The eighth-graders discovered through Bingo that they both have siblings and both love going to Disney World.

That’s the idea behind Mix—to get students talking to find the similarities, says Sarah Rech, the school’s guidance counselor. Rech organized the event and assigned students to tables marked by colorful placards with the names of different candies.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day coincided with the school’s guidance lessons on respect. Students had already begun talking about the idea of tolerance. Tomorrow their conversation will continue with discussions about similarities and differences and showing respect for others.

Rech inherited Mix It Up responsibilities from her predecessor more than four years ago. She’s been planning an annual Mix It Up at Lunch for her students ever since.

“Even though we’re small, we still have the groups that separate us,” Rech said. “This is a nice way to meet and get to know other people.”

So at Tuesday’s lunch, Cole Archer and his new friends learned a little more about each other. And they earned some ice cream.

Williamson is associate editor at Teaching Tolerance.