Civic Engagement
Being the change
Paideia students challenge themselves to create inclusive community and a better world for all. And through its civic engagement program, Paideia provides a range of resources and leadership opportunities to help them get there — tools they will use across a lifetime.
The civic engagement program powerfully embodies the school’s Framework of Values, specifically reinforcing the values Empathy, Social Responsibility and Development of an Ethical Self by working with regional community partners to support their programs and services.
How Civic Engagement works
Case in point: The Connections School
This community nonprofit is one of the school’s longstanding partners. At Connections — which provides high school education, community-engagement opportunities and transition programming for students with autism and other sensory, motor and communication differences — Paideia students lead classes, demonstrating leadership and mastering other important skills.
Civic Engagement at Paideia is founded on an important idea: to listen to the community’s needs and then align those needs with the abilities of Paideia students.
“The program helps students learn about a larger world and understand lives outside themselves, and that education comes from and by the community,” says Natalie Rogovin, director of civic engagement.
In volunteering with Civic Engagement, students learn to recognize the inequalities in our communities, challenge injustices and value diversity.
Paideia’s Civic Engagement program takes advantage of a host of internal opportunities the school offers that help spark ideas about how to be community-minded, such as through the STEAM , Urban Agriculture and Sustainability programs.
Before graduating, each Paideia student completes two internships with two 501(c)3 nonprofits, doing sustained work that addresses an issue(s) in the community. Interning with two organizations enables seeing different aspects of an issue, while the longer time commitment fosters understanding of how an issue affects a community.
- An internship must meet the minimum requirement of 30 service hours at a nonprofit.
- One internship may be completed with an on-campus program: Urban Agriculture, Cross-Age Teaching (High School students assisting in Elementary), Library Intern, Lab Assistant and Tech Crew.
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Exerting positive influence near and far
The Civic Engagement program takes every advantage of opportunities to create hands-on learning for Paideia students. Partnering with a teacher looking to take lessons beyond the classroom, as happened when students toured Candler Park and Druid Hills to learn more about local and Black history. Or when seniors Lucy Rotenberg and Raffaella Merino applied what they learned in Urban Agriculture and started PiBlooms, bringing flowers already growing on Pi Farm to local nursing home residents and other community members. Students also organize on their own, including through the club IMPACT, whose monthly service projects provide the chance to engage with a single community partner over the course of a year. In all these ways, giving back becomes second-nature — a deeply felt need — to Paideia students.
Natalie Rogovin director of civic engagement“It’s very powerful that Paideia is a place where sharing and collaboration comes naturally to so many students.”