Students at Inglewood Elementary School joined more than one million students across the country and around the world to help break down social and racial barriers by participating in Mix It Up at Lunch Day on Tuesday, October 23, 2018.
Mix It Up at Lunch Day is an international campaign that promotes students to identify, question and cross social boundaries. The event, launched by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance project in 2002, encourages students to sit with someone new in the cafeteria for one day. The goal is to incorporate the day into year-long efforts to promote a healthy school climate. Cafeterias are the focus of "Mix It Up" because that's where a school's social boundaries are most obvious. Many schools plan similar barrier-busting activities throughout the day or hold multiple events throughout the school year.
"Mix It Up is a positive step that schools can take to help create learning environments where students see each other as individuals and not just as members of a separate group," said Maureen Costello, the Southern Poverty Law Center's Director of Teaching Tolerance. "When people step out of their cliques and get to know someone, they realize just how much they have in common."
The Southern Poverty Law Center established Teaching Tolerance in 1991 to provide educators with free resources designed to reduce prejudice, improve intergroup relations and support equitable school experiences for the nation's children.
For more information about Mix It Up at Lunch Day, please click here https://www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up.
To see more photos from Mix It Up at Lunch Day at Inglewood, click here.