SAN JOSE, Calif. – School cafeterias are where cliques are most evident: jocks at one table, nerds at another.

But on Tuesday, schools across the country are participating in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, a program designed to help students break out of cliques, meet new people and make new friends.

Mix It Up is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. The organization publishes a magazine for educators called Teaching Tolerance.

Greg Barnett, a sociology teacher at Oak Grove High School in San Jose, has organized Oak Grove’s participation in Mix It Up the past three years. He has asked 100 students in three of his sociology classes to drum up support for the program among the school’s 2,700 students.

“If the adults do all the work, it doesn’t work – the kids have to drive it,” said Barnett, who has taught at the school for 15 years. “Some of our kids are going to perform rap songs on Monday to promote the event.”

On Tuesday, Oak Grove will have an extended lunch period. Barnett said the cliques at the school often break down along racial lines, while a number of students are loners who don’t appear to fit in anywhere. The students are being asked to make an effort to eat lunch with people with whom they don’t normally hang out.

It’s not too late for schools to get involved. For more information, go to http://www.mixitup.org./