The Goodrich Way: Getting Ready to Mix It Up

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 2^nd 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 …

· 5^th & 6^th 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 5^th & 6^th 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.