GrassRoots Middle

What we've been doing this summer and how you can join!

Civics isn't an elective—it's the foundation. Top schools and increasingly selective universities recognize this: they're prioritizing civic engagement because it reveals what grades and test scores cannot—who students actually are and what they'll contribute. Understanding how power works is what separates students who participate in the world from those who observe it.

We wanted our students to see how these things connect — that government, business, and the environment aren’t separate conversations. They’re the same one. Who has power? Who makes decisions? Who feels the impact? Those questions showed up in every unit, from the way communities are governed to the way goods are marketed to who gets clean air and water and why.

This winter, our students dove deep into food justice and community-controlled food economies through our place-based curriculum across Atlanta. We opened the session by connecting Dr. King's vision of environmental and economic justice to how community gardens build neighborhood power and food sovereignty. We also explored gentrification through neighborhood observation walks, examining how changing jobs, demographics, and development reshape who has access to land, food, an

The power of community in academic excellence.

We'd been talking about food apartheid for weeks. The charts, the vocabulary, the questions — our students had the framework. But walking into Sevananda? That's when it got real. Sevananda is one of the oldest collectively-owned natural food stores in the Southeast, and it's right here in Atlanta. Community-owned means the people who shop there can also own it. Decisions about what's stocked, who's paid fairly, where the money goes — that's not a distant corporation. That's t

This season at GrassRoots Middle we are studying the importance of food and it's connection to our government. We can't effectively discuss food without mentioning the importance of SLOW Food. The SLOW Food movement was created in 1989 in Italy by Carlo Petrini. Carlo, along with others, was protesting the opening of a McDonalds in Rome. To protest the McDonald's "Americanizing" of the Italian culture, Petrini directed protestors and others to eat locally and honor regional

See how our lessons are building up to our trip to DC!