Washington Middle School Counseling

Today all students in the lunch room had a simple task: after being handed a colored slip of paper at the door, they had to find 4 other students with four differently-colored slips. All 5 then had to make a linked chain with the slips and give the chain to a staff member, who gave them a treat. They then returned to the table, and, the idea went, had lunch and talked with the new people they had just met. This Mix It Up activity was the first of several WMS will put on this year as part of an effort to have students from different programs speak to, spend time with, and get to know each other. The slips of paper were in proportions corresponding to the 5 different educational programs at WMS: Accelerated Progress Program, Spectrum, Regular, English Language Learners, and Special Education. Student representatives on the Student Council, when told about Mix It Up day, said the number one way they wanted to mix it up was by program. Despite the enormous diversity in the student body at WMS, most students spend the majority of their time with students in their own program. The students are absolutely aware of this, and gave staff a clear message they would like to do something to overcome these artificial divisions when possible.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day is actually a nationwide activity started by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program. Over 10,000 schools…

participated this year. Here’s what the program has to say:

“We listened to young people talk about how hard it can be sometimes to fit in at school. The labeling and grouping on most campuses tend to put you in one group and keep you out of others. Sometimes, the way other people treat you is tied to how “your group” rates at school.We understand hanging out with people we think are most like us can be comfortable. But we also understand it can be uncomfortable when you want to hang out with someone new and other people think you should “stick with your own kind.”

Nowhere on school campuses are the boundaries of group membership more clearly drawn than in and around the cafeteria. “They” sit at those tables and “the ...” hang out over there. Everybody knows where you’re supposed to hang out. But why does it have to stay that way? Truth is, things don’t have to be how they’ve always been. That’s why we decided to support young people who wanted to create change and started Mix It Up. Mix It Up believes in the power of youth to create and sustain real change. We want to provide ideas and tools to help you break the walls of division in your school and community.”

So, did it work at WMS? We saw many tables at each lunch whose composition certainly hadn’t existed before, and many of those tables had conversations going. We’ll have more feedback from the students when we meet with them in the Student Council later. But for now, we see it as one small step toward inclusiveness and inclusion that mirrors WMS’s motto: “Unity in Diversity.”