Winter 2024 Newsletter
Our mission: Choose Creativity empowers children to develop into confident, resilient learners through an asset-based social and emotional learning curriculum.
Instructors trained: 1,529 Kids reached: 27,618
Welcome to our new partner sites: PS 007 — Samuel Stern, NYC, PS 38 — Roberto Clemente, NYC, PS 102 — Jacques Cartier School, NYC, PS 112 — Jose Celso Barbosa, NYC
Happy New Year! It’s been a fulfilling start here at Choose Creativity. The partnerships we’ve made in District 4 in East Harlem this past fall continue to flourish. We are incredibly appreciative of the support we have from our partner schools and administrators as they implement our program in their schools. Our curriculum, based on the 10 Principles of Creativity, is very simple yet it requires a lot of practice and support to do it justice. Terese Boegly, our head PD facilitator, has become a regular fixture in our partner schools, proudly and authentically representing Choose Creativity. Her passion and expertise for the curriculum is truly infectious. Our partners genuinely value the personalized time she spends with them in their schools.
Choose Creativity was honored to join Mosaic Prep, lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado, local council members, and corporate volunteers for MLK Jr. National Day of Service in East Harlem. The morning was spent filling the school’s walls with new murals, many of which were inspired by the 10 Principles of Creativity. Principal Daliz Vasquez kicked off the morning with an uplifting speech, sharing what our Learn with Creative Confidence program has meant to the staff and students at Mosaic this year:
“Our goal has always been to foster the social emotional development of our community. We want our students to be inspired, resourceful, and unconventional in their learning…Our partnership with Choose Creativity has provided social emotional learning support for our students through the 10 Principles of Creativity, which have inspired the murals that you will be painting today. It has been the hallmark of our school community this year. As you begin your work today, I ask that you use the Principles that we have incorporated in our school community: that you can be patient, be resourceful, of course be inspired, expressive, authentic and most of all, present.”
We’ve spent the past several months in East Harlem, popping into schools, catching up with enthusiastic administrators and teachers, and visiting classrooms using our program Learn with Creative Confidence. The 10 Principles of Creativity are working their magic. You can feel a renewed creative energy just by walking down the halls. Children are connecting to their 10 creative superpowers and beginning to incorporate these creative words into their daily vocabulary. During a lesson on the patient Principle, Liam, a 2nd grader told us, “I waited for the teacher to bring me materials and I had to be really patient sorting through all of the materials to get exactly what I needed.” What a joy it is to see our program, paired with the students beaming faces, in the spotlight at these schools.
