About CREATE

The CREATE mission is to co-create a model for building the civic capacity of students in our community through our K-12 schools.

The CREATE project was designed to engage all teachers and administrators across the K-12 spectrum. We believe that everyone involved in education play a role in cultivating the skill and dispositions that prepare students for life in our society.

CREATE is directly focused on hands-on civic engagement activities for teachers and students.

CREATE’s vision is model that plants the seeds for a civic identity that is values-based and action-oriented without being polarizing. To cultivate teachers and students who are co-learners and co-directors of their classroom learning community.

The vision for this project is to enhance educators’ capacity to foster three types of civic learning in students: 

1. Civic knowledge, or an understanding of American history and political development, governmental structures and processes, and relevant social studies knowledge and concepts; 
2. Civic skills, or the capacities that enable students to participate in a democracy as free, responsible, deliberative, and productive citizens
3. Civic dispositions, or the attitudes important in a democracy such as a sense of responsibility for one’s community and nation, an awareness of a shared fate with fellow citizens, curiosity about the challenges and opportunities of public life, and concern for the welfare of others.

Our aim is to equip schools to foster civic agency in their students: the capacity to work across differences for shared purposes, in line with their considered values yet in pursuit of a commonwealth reflecting as many divergent perspectives and lifeways as basic justice, general health, and universal dignity can accommodate.