Want to bridge the divides in your school? Start a Mix It Up Dialogue!

Get students together to talk about why cliques exist and how to break through them to make your school a better place. (Note: The Mix It Up Dialogue process involves four discussion sessions. For this reason, we do not recommend using Mix Dialogues as an activity on Mix It Up at Lunch Day.)

So what do you do after Mix It Up at Lunch Day?

Dig deeper in Mix It Up Dialogues. Get students together to talk more about why cliques exist and how to break through them to make your school a better place.

Mix It Up Dialogues — also called study circles — are different from conversations and debates. They help people really get to know each another and begin to respect different viewpoints. And they are effective because they provide a safe place for you to talk about what's going on and suggest ways to create more open and accepting schools. Here's how they work:

• They are small groups of 8-10 people.
• Youth and/or adult facilitators can lead them.
• The group agrees on guidelines for the talk.
• Group members do not have to agree, just listen and learn how to find common ground.

HOW IT WORKS
1. Talk: The Mix It Up Dialogue
A Mix It Up Dialogue Group gets together four times. You might meet over lunch, as part of a class, or through a special program. You'll get to know each other, and start talking about how to break through social barriers. You'll talk about questions like:

• Why do certain people hang out together?
• What happens when we reach out beyond our own group?
• What would it mean to us, and to our school, if we broke down some boundaries and got to know one another?

2. Plan: The Next Steps Forum
At the Next Steps Forum, everyone who has been part of a Mix It Up Dialogue group will get together with many other people in the school to talk about what they did in the Dialogues. The entire group will share ideas and start to make plans for specific action projects that will help to break down boundaries in the school.

3. Take Action
After the Next Steps Forum, you will be ready to go into action. Some action projects will be small, involving just a few people. Others might be so large that they involve the entire school.

GET STARTED
Download our spring 2006 Activity Packs.

Mix it Up is a nationwide campaign to identify, question and break down walls of division. The Study Circles Resource Center and Tolerance.org and Teaching Tolerance — two projects of the Southern Poverty Law Center — combined efforts to create Mix It Up.