The Goodrich Way: Getting Ready for 3rd Annual Mix It Up Day!!

“Leadership & learning are indispensable to each other” – JFK

Making posters with their partners

If you visit our building in the next few days you'll notice posters promoting our upcoming Mix It Up Day scheduled for Friday, October 16th. If you are new to our school, you may be wondering what Mix It Up Day is.

For the past 2 years, Mrs. Ross (previously Miss Abrams) and I have organized a Mix It Up event. The idea stems from 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 special opportunity allows students to meet someone from a different grade level who they might not otherwise have a chance to meet.

Here’s how Mix It Up Day plays out in our school …

· Grades 1-6 will participate in Mix It Up activities on October 16^th at the same time. (How cool is that?)

· Two different grade levels will play community building games which are chosen and lead by the Student Leaders assigned to them. That means that different classes will be doing different activities, depending on their leader.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of planning that goes into ensuring that this school wide event is organized and runs smoothly. We are lucky to have an amazing group of 5^th & 6^th grade Student Leaders to plan, promote and organize the afternoon’s activities. Our current 6^th graders were 5^th graders last year and they are happy to show the ropes to the newbies.

Students introduced and shared 3 things about themselves

Although this is my 3^rd year co-facilitating Mix It Up Day, I continue to be impressed with our Student Leaders. We held our 1^st meeting after school. The 6^th graders came ready to share their ideas and experiences with the 5^th graders. And the 5^th graders brought their excitement and wiliness to learn. The students have begun designing the promotional posters and bouncing ideas off each other.

While Mix It Up Day is an exciting day for students and staff here at Goodrich, I can honestly say that the excitement for me comes from watching the student leaders take responsibility for planning and promoting the day, to taking ownership of running the classroom activities, to debriefing afterwards and discussing what worked and what could be improved. They understand what leadership is and they own it! That’s the #GRWAY!