Chester Elementary students cross boundaries during 'Mix It Up' lunch

CHESTER — Students at Chester Elementary School this week joined more than one million other students across the country to help break down social barriers by participating in the 15th annual Mix It Up at Lunch Day.
“Today, our children courageously stepped outside their comfort zones to forge new friendships,” said fifth-grade teacher Rebecca Quackenbush, who co-organized the event with her student teacher Samantha Jacklitsch. "It’s a simple act with profound implications."
Launched by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project in 2002, Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to sit with someone new in the caféteria for just one day. Caféterias 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. Some use the event to kick off yearlong explorations of social divisions.
Students at CES eagerly entered through the lunch room doors, greeted by the friendly faces of their school community and PTA moms. Each student received a colored popsicle stick that corresponded to a table adorned with similarly colored balloons. At each table, bowls overflowing with conversation starters sat waiting. Meanwhile, parent helpers, Board of Education members, and volunteers from Kiwanis, along with school lunch monitors, thoughtfully positioned themselves around the room to help encourage and support the children as necessary. The mix of both nervous and excited energy was palpable.
“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 Teaching Tolerance Director Maureen Costello. “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.