This month we had the opportunity to train 3 new Roots of Success instructors who will be teaching the Roots of Success course at New Roots High School in Ithaca, New York. Tina Nilson-Hodges, Aaron Snow, and Lisa Marshall will be teaching the course to 10th, 11th and 12th graders at New Roots HS in Spring 2022, after which the Roots of Success course will be a required course in the core curriculum.

New Roots Charter School is a tuition-free, nonprofit regional public charter high school located in downtown Ithaca serving youth in grades 9-12.  Launched in 2008, New Roots is an innovative and fully integrated model of best practices for education for justice and sustainability and a vision to empower young people as citizens and entrepreneurs that create just, democratic communities, and thriving green economies that restore the natural world that sustains us.

Recognized in 2021 by the U.S. Department of Education as a Green Ribbon School, New Roots is an Accelerator School for the Green Schools National Network, and was the first school in the U.S. certified as a Human Rights Friendly School by the Dorothy Cotton Institute (2016).

New Roots Charter School offers an empowering, inclusive, antiracist education that features community-based learning, individualized learning, and engagement in leadership development and democratic processes. These essential elements of the whole school design for sustainability education foster a strong connection to and understanding of Ithaca and the wider region, individual empowerment and initiative, and skills and understanding that lead to strong collaborative relationships among students of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. These are the young people who will become the citizen leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurial thinkers who will work together to use their hands, hearts, and minds to create a just and sustainable future together, today while in high school and tomorrow in our academic institutions and the workforce.