WGMS is . . . Mixin’ It Up!

Students at WGMS are set to challenge social and racial boundaries during the our first Mix It Up at Lunch Day!

Students at WGMS will join more than 4 million others across the country to challenge social and racial boundaries on Thursday, November 13, as part of the seventh annual Mix It Up at Lunch Day, a project designed to foster respect and understanding in schools and communities.

Mix It Up encourages students to question and cross boundaries by sitting somewhere else and talking to someone else at lunch for just one day. Our awesome WEB Leaders will visit 6th, 7th and 8th grade Language Arts classrooms on Wednesday, November 12 to educate and challenge their peers.

More than 8,000 schools are expected to participate in this year’s program, which is sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project. Visit www.mixitup.org for more information!

“This year, Mix It Up Day has a special significance because of the historic election of Barack Obama as the first black president,” said Mix It Up Director, Samantha Elliott Briggs. “Students across America are very excited about doing their part to tear down the walls that divide us.”

Student organizers say that Mix It Up at Lunch Day successfully encourages students to cross group lines and meet new people, helps foster school spirit and unity, raises awareness about social boundaries, helps students make new friends
and makes students feel more comfortable interacting with different kinds of people.

“Let’s all shake it up and mix it up!”

Questions? Contact teacher sponsor Melissa Garcia at

NOVEMBER “MIX IT UP” SURVEY

In November 2008, WGMS students Mixed it Up! Students from all three grades, girls and guys, hung out and ate lunch with different people. Here are the results of the surveys students took in Language Arts classes.

Question #1:  Where/when do people break into their cliques or groups?
Answer: Mostly at lunch or the quad and in after school activities.

Question #2: Cliques or groups tend to associate themselves by . . .
Answer: How much money they have, what neighborhood they live in and what ethnicity they belong to.

Question #3: How easy is it to make new friends at school?
Answer: 10% said it was “very easy”, 65% said it was “kind of easy”, 20% said it was “kind of hard”, and 5% said it was “very hard”.

Question #4: Have you ever felt unwelcome?
Answer: 87% said “yes”; 13% said “no”

Question #5: Have you ever been apart of a group that rejected someone else?
Answer: 56% said “yes”; 44% said “no”