Overview
- The Personal Creed Project guides students in elementary, middle, high school and college English courses to reflect on their life experience to discover what they value.
- A series of weekly reflections weaves through the rest of your curriculum, culminating in presentations students and their teachers experience as life-changing classroom rites-of- passage.
- The Creed Project guides students to address six of ten Common Core anchor standards in writing, and six of six in speaking and listening. It adapts readily to most English and multiple subject courses.
- Sustained enthusiasm for the Creed experience at schools and colleges across the country for more than 20 years invites deepened notions of learning and curriculum. See John’s Work with Teachers.
Each class member…
1. Compiles a short list of the main forces and people that have shaped their life so far;
2. Distills from these main influences a set of values their life experience is teaching them;
3. Identifies qualities they wish to develop in themselves to best live their “creed values”;
4. Shares in a presentation with their class community:
a) their main influences,
b) their Creed values,
c) the qualities they’ve chosen to develop, and
d) the difference they wish to make in others’ lives.
Students Can Create These Outcomes:
- Gain a more balanced perspective on the academic portion of their learning–how academic and personal development both matter and balance one another;
- Begin a lifelong habit of updating their values and reflecting on how best to live them;
- Form a healthy sense of identity at any stage of child or adult development;
- Play a more conscious role in a family, a school or workplace, and in our democracy as a citizen who knows what they stand for.
John Creger launched the Personal Creed Project his second year teaching English at American High School in Fremont CA, his first year with sophomores. Largely a delayed intuitive response to his own unsatisfying high school experience, the project embodies John’s hopes to provide his students what was missing for him.
Former Students on Project’s Long-term Benefits
Dan Zhou ‘s sister Claire experienced the Personal Creed Project in 2015-16. In response, Dan volunteered to make this short film to introduce the project to teachers. Dan interviewed John’s former students Sehar Kamal, now a writer and English teacher at Irvington High School in Fremont, Duron Aldredge, a physician practicing in San Francisco, and Lorato Anderson, undergraduate advisor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Special thanks to Dan for this beautiful testimonial.
Watch video in fullscreen.
Angelique Valenzuela (AHS class of 2019) volunteered to guest present in her sister’s class in April 2021, four years after her initial presentation in high school. Now a college sophomore, Angelique mentors her sister and her classmates. She reports how her Creed experience in high school influences the career decisions she is currently making in college. Thanks to Angelique for being willing to mentor and share her valuable perspectives with those who follow.
Watch video in fullscreen.