Registration Open for National Mix It Up At Lunch Day

Registration is open for the Mix It Up at Lunch Day 2012, set for Oct. 30.

The event, sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program, encourages students across the nation to challenge and cross social boundaries by sitting with someone new in the cafeteria for just one day.

“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. It can be an important step toward creating schools where bullying and harassment don’t thrive.”

Cafeterias are the focus of Mix It Up because that’s where a school’s social boundaries are most obvious. Breaking down these barriers can help reduce bullying, an issue that has received national attention following a string of bullying-related suicides in recent years.

More than 1 million students across the nation took part in the event last year. Schools participating in this year’s activities are encouraged to register using Teaching Tolerance’s Mix It Up map.

The Teaching Tolerance website also offers an array of other free online resources to help school groups and classroom teachers explore the issue of social boundaries and plan their event.

As one of the nation’s leading providers of anti-bias education resources, Teaching Tolerance reaches hundreds of thousands of educators and millions of students annually through its Teaching Tolerance magazine, multimedia teaching kits, online curricula, professional development resources and classroom-friendly social justice documentaries. These materials are provided to educators at no cost.