The “Mix it Up” Program for U.S. Schools

This week’s School Spotlight is highlighting the “Mix It Up” program schools throughout the U.S. have been implementing into their students’ lunchtime. As a result, participating schools have been enjoying great success in breaking down barriers that often stem from misunderstandings in cultural diversities.

Source: http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/fordson-high-school "Mix It Up"- Fordson High School Webpage

The “Mix it Up” program is the brain child of Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that “is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children.” And with the “Mix It Up at Lunch” program, they are certainly living up to their modus operandi. With just a few years in operation, this program has quickly grown to include 2,420 schools that are utilizing its service. In this number, 50 different schools serve as “Mix It Up Model Schools.”

…..

Just what is Mix It Up at Lunch Day?

According to Teaching Tolerance’s Website, this is “A national campaign launched by Teaching Tolerance a decade ago, Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries.

In our surveys, students have identified the cafeteria as the place where divisions are most clearly drawn. So on one day – October 18 this school year – we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch.”

Source: http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/fordson-high-school "Mix It Up"- Fordson High School Webpage

This program has changed hearts, minds and attitudes of many students in our nation’s schools, building tolerance, breaking barriers and bridging gaps. One such school experienced great success when it implemented the program in 2009. Through Mix It Up, students at Fordson High School in Dearborn, Michigan, were happy when they were included in the project.

One hundred and fifty ninth-grade students where chosen and then divided into three lunch periods (50 students per lunch period). They were hand-picked from among the following subgroups: blacks, whites, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iraqis, jocks, band members, cheerleaders as well as students in special education and bilingual classes.

Each table was overseen by two older team leaders to help get things started. The results: “Many of them walked away with new friends. Also, Mix It Up brought down walls of race and ethnicity. At the same time, it built new relationships among the team leaders and the staff members who supported the event.”

The Mix It Up Website “offers an array of free online resources designed to help school groups and classroom teachers explore the issue of social boundaries. These activities can be used as ice-breakers during the planning process, to get the group geared up for the event; or they can be used as classroom activities by teacher allies seeking to support the Mix It Up effort.”

The Teaching Tolerance organization supplies the tools and know-how for schools to involve their students in Mix It Up. The program is offered absolutely free for any school in America, and only has six simple steps to get started mixing it up at lunch.

Source: http://www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up/model-schools

“Mix It Up Model Schools embrace respect and inclusiveness as core values—they ‘mix it up’ all year long.  These schools have done an exemplary job of organizing, publicizing and implementing Mix It Up at Lunch Day. By sharing their recipes for success, Model Schools are beacons for other schools striving for inclusiveness.” To learn more about the criteria schools need to meet to become one of the 2011/2012 Mix It Up Model Schools, click here. Do you know a school that has the potential to become a “Mix It Up Model School?” It’s not too late. Teaching Tolerance is accepting application for schools wishing to become a Model School until February 1, 2012.

Teaching tolerance and appreciation in cultural diversity is one of the most important and fundamental things that we can do for our children. Through doing this, our youth are instilled with the ability to understand, accept, and yes, even appreciate the many differences filling our world. This is a part of creating the “better tomorrow” that is so often heard and yearned for by community. If you know of a school participating in a similar program, we would love to hear how it has affected students, staff and your community. So, please, write us and let us know. We are all ears.

This week, State of the Re:Union would like to entertain our School Spotlight series with a recently required concept in preschool. The subject matter, preschool, is a notion that has actually been around and in use for quite some time. However, it is the mandate of incorporating it into the public school system that is making an old hat seem like a new accessory to education.

Thanks to the award-winning documentary “Early Lessons” by Emily Hanford, the River Breeze Elementary school was brought to our attention. However, a little bit of background information will need to be laid out before getting to why we chose them for this week’s School Spotlight.

Hanford’s documentary explores one of the most noted education experiments of the last 50 years, the Perry Preschool Project. One particular question asked in the 1962 study was: “Can preschool boost the IQ scores of poor African-American children and prevent them from failing in school?” According to Hanford, “the surprising results are now challenging widely-held notions about what helps people succeed – in school, and in life.”

A brief background of the study: In the late 1950s, a Michigan school system administrator, David Weikart, realized how badly these children were doing and decided to do something about it. In lieu of holding them back a year, he decided to head off the situation and start a preschool dedicated to helping 3- and 4-year-olds become smarter. After successfully proving Weikart’s case, the notion of cognitive development in the form of hands-on preschool was born. (To read more on the Perry Preschool results, click here.)

Forward to our School Spotlight today – a preschool classroom at River Breeze Elementary in Palatka, Florida. Here, school administrators and preschool teachers embrace the practices that were founded by Weikart. They believe that through interacting with children in the same hands-on learning manner as Perry Preschool, they will achieve similar, if not the same, results. Like the Perry children, these kids are being targeted for special education coming into the River Breeze preschool program who are from poor families. Some of these little ones have lived at homes with absolutely no books, and don’t say much when starting the program. However, these preschoolers soon get over their lack of artful conversation. One mother was surprised when her “quiet” child began singing the ABCs all the time. She even asked her child’s preschool teacher what she did to help her learn to find and use her voice.

All members of the River Breeze preschool program are very interactive. There are seven different areas that the classroom is divided into, and these areas contain just a few children at a time. The teachers not only watch the children learn through “getting dirty” with the hands-on learning, but they get to partake in the fun, too. Through doing this, the teachers can learn how the children are learning and customize an educational experience that will specifically target each child. This interaction also instills a positive school experience for the children, helping develop both their cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

River Breeze preschool is modeled after the same approach used by the Perry Preschool.  Children involved in the hands-on approach not only learn the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, but important life coping and social skills, including motivation and the ability to work with others. These are the skills that are critical in helping people do well at school, at work, and most importantly, in life.

The families, children and teachers at River Breeze Elementary are happily taking a few pages out of the Perry Preschool Project study. They truly believe that, for them, this hands-on approach is what works for their children deserving a chance in successfully obtaining an education. They are also encouraged by the results yielded by the Perry Preschool Project: The participants in the study who went to preschool were more likely to be employed, making money, staying out of legal trouble, owning homes and cars, having families and being involved with them. All of this success allowed little time for these men and women to get mixed up in crime. Ere go, preschool helped cut the crime rate in half.

So, I guess all of the posters touting that everything we need to know is learned in kindergarten might need to have an alternate version printed with Pre-K, instead. With all of the controversy on broken policy shrouding our educational school systems, maybe more people should follow suit after River Breeze Elementary preschool teachers and administrators. With any luck, history will repeat itself for these families as they look to the past to get to their future.

Is this a possible solution that is feasible for the whole country? Some people are of the mind that children need a childhood and that school is too stressful. Others believe that there can never be enough school, and it is never too early to begin. What wheelhouse do you belong in? Is there such a thing as too early or too much? Or do you think that might be part of the prescription that our nation needs to inoculate itself against F-Cats, falling educational scores, and the excessive dropout rate? We at SOTRU love stories that help us understand others’ points of view. If you have one, we’d love to hear it.

There aren’t that many big changes in American life that I would consider a 100 percent net positive development. Usually, there are pluses and minuses, something gained and something lost. For instance, I love being able to stream videos and buy books and music online, but hate the idea that book stores and records stores (yes, even video stores) are going away. The dearth of public places where people gather and browse is a big loss.

But if I did have to come up with a wholly positive, 100 percent good change, it would be the growing number and size of farmers markets throughout the land. Whenever I visit a new place (if in the spring, summer or fall), I invariably make it by the local farmers market.

Admittedly, I’m not always buying kale. I may get a cup of coffee and an adobado burrito (if I’m at the Santa Fe Farmers Market) or a buffalo brat (back home in Denver), but occasionally some actual produce does find its way into my bag.

Farmers markets combine public spaces with increased consumer choice and better nutrition. They help support local producers and make it more possible and popular to have “farm-to- table” eating experiences, whether in a chic restaurant or at home. And more and more farmers markets are doing something else—promoting better nutrition and greater access to affordable, fresh produce in lower income, inner city communities.

I first noticed this trend in 2008 when New Haven, Connecticut, won an All-America City Award and one of its projects was an ambitious city effort to bring farmers markets into produce-deprived low income neighborhoods. Now Ann Arbor, Michigan, a 2011 All-America City finalist has joined the trend.

At age 91, the farmers market in the Kerrytown section of Ann Arbor its one of the largest producer-only farmers markets in Michigan, an agglomeration of more than 100 market vendors including farmers, growers, bakers and artisans. The market operates year round on Saturdays and also on Wednesdays from May through December.

And since 2004, the Project FRESH program has made farmer’s market produce available to low-income, “nutritionally at-risk consumers,” specifically the 5600 participants in Washtenaw County’s Women, Infants & Children Program. Program participants receive a booklet of ten $2 coupons to be used at their local farmers markets between June 1 and Oct. 31. Only fresh fruit and vegetables may be purchased (no prepackaged foods or baked goods).

Getting the project started was not without its difficulties, however. When it was first launched only five market vendors were willing to participate, preferring to sell on a cash or check only basis, but these days about 80 percent of vendors participate, with an approximate redemption amount of $5,088.

The market has also joined forces with the state and federal low income food assistance programs (FAPs), better known as food stamp programs. Eligible participants receive food assistance benefits electronically on a state-issued “Bridge “Card, which the Ann Arbor Farmers Market began accepting as a form of payment in 2009.

This was a little tricky because earlier the market only accepted cash and checks, so as food stamp program changed from paper vouchers to electronic swiping cards a new process had to be developed. Participants were asked to swipe their Bridge card in the market office and request a dollar amount to use at the market. The amount is then deducted from their card in exchange for market tokens to use at participating market vendor stalls. To avoid a stigma being associated with using tokens, the market also began issuing tokens for any shoppers who wish to pay with a credit card.

FAP recipients can use the Bridge Card to purchase fruits, vegetables, baked goods and pre-packaged foods at the farmers market. In 2009, there were approximately 20 market vendors participating with a redemption rate of $4,750. By 2010, there were 56 market vendors participating with an approximate redemption rate of $16,200.

This, as I said before, has to be one of the 100 percent wholly positive developments and it seems to be something of a trend. Farmers markets in Portland, Oregon and Detroit have similar programs. Ann Arbor market manager Molly Notarianni calls it a “win-win-win” solution, adding an extra “win” to the usual “win-win.” It’s good for the farmers, who have more potential customers. It’s good for the government, which can get more nutritious food to nutritionally “underserved” communities. And it’s good for the food assistance recipients, who get to eat healthier for less.

Win-win-win.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.