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Inspirations
New Roots School has been inspired by the vision and spirit of a few outstanding leaders and organizations, including Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, Dr. Maria Montessori, and EcoVillage at Ithaca.
“A healthy natural world is the heart of an equitable and peaceful society.”
 Wangari Maathai
Nobel Peace Prize winner, 2004
Dr. Wangari Maathai, environmentalist and activist, was recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for her work in transforming the lives of women and their communities. She empowered them to plant trees to restore the natural world that they depend on for survival.
Over the past thirty years, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 40 million trees in Africa, pushing back the encroaching Sahara Desert and reviving hope among communities threatened by poor land management practices, corporate greed and unjust, short-sighted governance.
Dr. Maathai’s life work is inspired by her understanding that just, democratic governance, thriving economies that support communities, and a healthy natural world are inextricably linked. Our students will come to understand this relationship intimately through interdisciplinary connections between academic courses and direct engagement with our communities and the natural lands that surround and support them.
We are inspired by Dr. Maathai’s courage, her persistence, her optimism, her willingness to act on behalf of her community and the web of life in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Dr. Maathai is also a symbol of the power of higher education, and the importance of all people having access to higher education. A biologist, she was the first woman from east and central Africa to be awarded a doctorate. New Roots’ Early College Program will prepare all students for an advanced degree, by giving them the confidence and knowledge to access higher education. We will help support and develop their goals and aspirations and their ability to take leadership in improving the life of their community.
Members of our growing New Roots community traveled to Geneva, New York, in April 2008 to attend a ceremony at Hobart and William Smith Colleges where Wangari Maathai was presented the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. Founder and educational leader Tina Nilsen-Hodges delivered a brief address, and Julia Bleier (age 11) presented Dr. Maathai with a certificate honoring her as an inspiration for New Roots School.
Dr. Maathai was clearly touched to learn that Julia had first suggested her as a symbol and inspiration for our school.
Sharing these moments with Dr. Maathai, we felt her warm, joyful and grounded nature. She epitomizes the personal qualities we hope to nurture in our students—the ability to be fully present, joyful and engaged, and to connect with others in ways that create new possibilities.
“Teachers must have the greatest respect for the young personality, realizing that in the soul of the adolescent, great values are hidden, and that in the minds of these boys and girls, there lies all our hope of future progress and the judgment of our times.”
 Maria Montessori
Dr. Maria Montessori’s vision of a land- and community-based education for adolescents has inspired us in the creation of New Roots School. Montessori education at the secondary level seeks to ground students in a sense of place and history, and helps them recognize the powerful, unique role they play in the life of their community.
During adolescence, young people experience a second birth, a kind of social rebirth, as they construct the social identities that they will carry into adulthood, Montessori said. Therefore, a community-oriented school that provides opportunities for real work and contribution becomes crucial to the moral and intellectual development of the “social newborn.” Adolescents have such a keen sense of justice that they thrive when they do service—with the elderly, in soup kitchens for the homeless, in projects that help protect the environment. Montessori understood young adolescents, their spiritual attraction, their keen humanistic tendencies, their sense of world solidarity, their creative expectations, and their deep absorption of the values and circumstances around them. The adolescent possesses a positive psychology and personal dignity, combined with a zeal for social reform. “These feelings are the most noble of characteristics and ought to prepare man to become a social being,” Montessori wrote in her book From Childhood to Adolescence.
New Roots seeks to nurture these qualities in our adolescents and to create the “little community” experience that will give students a sense of belonging and an appreciation for the ways that their talents and energy contribute to making their community what it is.
Like Wangari Maathai, Maria Montessori was a visionary, an optimist, and a woman who fearlessly pushed beyond societal rules in the service of humanity. The first woman to become a doctor in Italy, she devoted her life to developing an approach to education that created the optimal conditions for human development. She believed that this approach to education would provide the foundation for peace, which seemed especially elusive in Europe during her lifetime. Indeed, we can see the possibility of peaceful social relationships realized in the microcosms of Montessori school communities the world over.
EcoVillage at Ithaca
 Around the world, people are developing ecovillages, living laboratories that demonstrate sustainable living. These communities work to develop meaningful, equitable social relationships, sustainable economies, and restorative relationships with the natural world. EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI) for example, is recognized as an international leader in this movement.
EcoVillage at Ithaca’s natural lands, farms, and neighborhoods will be a resource for New Roots students as they learn to apply their academic knowledge to create more sustainable ways of living.
About the new EcoVillage Center for Sustainability Education
Drawing on the social, cultural, and intellectual capital of EcoVillage at Ithaca, a vibrant living laboratory that integrates intentional community living, organic farming, education, and local partnerships, the Center for Sustainability Education (CSE) will be a regional hub for people to create and share knowledge together, a training center for the personal, social, economic and ecological dimensions of sustainable community design, and a launching pad for sustainable organizations and enterprises. Immersed in life at EcoVillage, participants in CSE programs will experience being part of a sustainable community, and come to understand the complex web of relationships among people and place that support it. This experience will provide a foundation for envisioning alternative futures for their own communities. Under the guidance of experienced EcoVillagers, they will learn the processes and skills of social sustainability that will allow them to transform these visions into action.
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