As a way of creating a non-judgemental environment for students, various HUSD teachers and staff members participate in CREATE!, a community to develop ways to teach freedom through art. CREATE! holds monthly meetings on different art topics as a professional development opportunity for teachers in the district. This program aids teachers in embracing their own creative practice, so they can apply it in an academic setting and teach students to erase their inner critic.

“I think it’s given me encouragement or permission to try out new things in my classroom,” said Ward Stern, English teacher at Tennyson High School.

Stern said he has taken lessons from CREATE! and brought more art activities to the classroom. He also explained how he sees his students connecting with each other more through these new teachings. 

“It helps them be a little more vulnerable, kind of let those walls down,” added Stern.

Various warm-up exercises take place during meetings so members learn how to notice and overcome their own fears. If the educator can learn to connect and resonate with each other through visual and mental warm-ups, then similar energy will be evident in their classrooms and among their students.

“I think that the more the teachers are able to embrace their own creative practice, the more they can hold that space for the students,” said Joyful Raven, one of the CREATE! facilitators from the January meeting.

She said her goal was to free teachers from a rigid academic setting by introducing creative outlets.

Surrounded by themes of humanity, idealism, and realism, CREATE! produces a space where “the discomfort becomes comfortable,” as stated by the Visual and Performing Arts Teacher on Special Assignment Mina Mangewala.