Last fall, Miss Abram, our
school Social Worker, and I approached
Mr. Scaletta about participating in Teaching Tolerance’s Mix It Up at Lunch event.
Mix
It Up at Lunch is a national campaign created
by Teaching Tolerance which encourages students to interact with kids
from different classrooms during lunch. This provides an opportunity to talk
with someone they might not otherwise have a chance to know or socialize with. After receiving feedback from staff and
students, we organized a 2nd Mix It Up event in Spring, 2014. That
event took place in the classrooms instead of the lunch room. It was such a hit
that we are doing it again this week!
Here’s how Mix
It Up Day plays out in our school …
·
5th & 6th grade Student
Leaders were selected based on teacher recommendations to plan, promote and
organize the day’s activities.
·
Grades 1-6 will participate in Mix
It Up activities on December 18th at the same time. (How cool is that?)
·
Two different grade levels will play community
building games which are facilitated by the Student Leaders assigned to
them.
As a facilitator of Mix It Up
Day, I’ve been able to see another benefit to this experience. I’ve been able
to watch the student leaders truly evolve into their leadership roles. In order
to be a Student Leader, our 5th & 6th graders had to
commit to attending meetings after school, as well as meet during their lunch
& recess times. If you know anything about students, you know how important
lunch and recess are to them. Yet this group doesn’t mind our working lunches to ensure the event will
be a success. They selected the games they would play with their assigned grade
levels, taking into consideration the complexity of directions and even the
language proficiency of our bilingual students.
This interaction is one more example of Goodrich School’s commitment to creating a strong and caring school community.
*More information about Mix
It Up at Lunch can be found on the Teaching Tolerance website www.teachingtolerance.org
No comments:
Post a Comment