How Tolerant Are Kids in Your School?

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Students graph results of a survey of attitudes and tolerance in their school.

Subjects: Language Arts, Visual Arts, Educational Technology, Math, Health, Social Studies

Grade Levels: 6-8, 9-12

Objectives
Students will:

• take a survey about the social barriers that exist or do not exist in their school;
• collect data;
• input data into a spreadsheet program (optional);
• create graphs to show how open or closed the student population is in their school; and,
• suggest ways to open up communications between particular groups of students.

Keywords
clique, bully, tolerance, prejudice, self-esteem

Materials Needed

• printed copy of the Mix It Up Questionnaire
• Internet access in order to participate in online survey (optional)
• spreadsheet software (optional)
• graphing software or the free Create a Graph Tool (optional)
• art supplies (optional)

Procedure
Mix It Up is a unique program from Tolerance.org, an arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The program is intended to break down social barriers that exist in many schools by opening communication among kids who would not normally interact with one another. The Mix It Up Web site offers a survey tool that can help determine whether students in your school are open to getting to know kids with interests different from their own. Students can answer the questionnaire online, or it can be printed and mailed to the folks at Mix It Up.

Ask students: What is the social climate in this school like? Do students form social groups because of race, neighborhood, income level, or special interests? How difficult do you think it is for other students to break into those cliques? Do you think kids in this school make an effort to "mix it up?"

Print the Mix It Up questionnaire and provide a copy to each student. Ask students to carefully consider each question and respond honestly. (They need not sign their names.) Then gather all the forms and have students tabulate the raw data.

Then have students choose -- or assign each student -- a bar graph depicting data about one of the following:

1. Whether the school climate is, generally speaking, a) welcoming or b) not welcoming.
2. The number of students who have seen unwelcoming cliques in any of the following situations: after-school clubs, assemblies, buses, the cafeteria, classrooms, recreational activities, and/or at spectator events.
3. The number of students who are aware of school cliques based on any of the following: academic ability, athletic ability, beliefs, ethnicity, family income, gender, hobbies/interests, home neighborhood, primary language spoken, musical interest, personal appearance, race, sexual orientation, and/or style.
4. The group among the following that appears to be the most difficult to break into: a group formed based on academic ability, athletic ability, beliefs, ethnicity, family income, gender, hobbies/interests, home neighborhood, primary language spoken, musical interest, personal appearance, race, sexual orientation, or style.
5. Whether it is a) very easy, b) kind of easy, c) kind of hard, or d) very hard for kids in the school to make friends with kids in different groups.
6. The number of students who have felt unwelcome or rejected by a particular group because of their academic ability, athletic ability, beliefs, ethnicity, family income, gender, hobbies/interests, home neighborhood, primary language spoken, musical interest, personal appearance, race, sexual orientation, or style.
7. The number of students who have ever been part of a group that rejected others, based on academic ability, athletic ability, beliefs, ethnicity, family income, gender, hobbies/interests, home neighborhood, primary language spoken, musical interest, personal appearance, race, sexual orientation, or style.
8. The number of students who would be willing to do any of the following to encourage more intra-group interaction in school: introduce themselves to someone new, sit with someone different at lunch, help the school participate in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, choose someone they do not know for a pick-up team, dance with someone from another group, invite "outsiders" to a party with their friends, or join a club of others who want to "Mix It Up."
9. The adult in the school who students would be most likely talk to about creating intra-group programs, among the following: a coach, a school counselor, a friend, a parent, a religious leader, a teacher, or somebody else.

Students might use graphing software or the free online Create a Graph Tool to create colorful, professional-looking graphs to illustrate survey results.

Curriculum Connections

Math. Instead of creating charts based on raw data, have students convert data into percents and create charts showing those percents.

Technology. Students enter data into a spreadsheet instead of tallying it by hand.

Art. Instead of the traditional bar graph, students can create their bar graphs in more creative or symbolic ways. A photograph of the school building might be cut into strips to form the bars. A collage of smiling student faces might be created and reduced to the size of a full-length bar. The possibilities for creative graphs are endless.

Language Arts: Rather than graph the data, students might choose to write a summary report of the survey results.

Assessment
The Curriculum Connections activities might be used as the lesson assessment. In that way, students can select the activity that appeals most to their learning style.

Alternative Assessment: Have students write a brief paragraph or essay describing what they learned about their school from the survey; they might be required to offer two recommendations for improving communication among student groups in their school.

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