Crankin' Up Creativity

This month, Crankin’ Up Creativity looks at how creativity advances science by talking with Hudson Valley native Catherine Ciocchi. As a youngster, Catherine and her family enjoyed camping and hiking in the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. Catherine Ciocchi is an Earth science teacher and author of This Land is Your Land (Arbordale Publishing) Now an Ea rth science teacher for high schoolers, Catherine also is the author of This Land is Your Land  ( Arbordale Publishing , May 2015), a p icture book that has young readers take a trip around the world to discover the Earth's landforms and geologic features, www.catherineciocchi.com , twitter.com/CatherineCiocc1. Crankin’ Up Creativity : Science is based on cut-and-dry facts. That leaves little room for creativity, doesn’t it? Catherine Ciocch i : We are all on the planet Earth, except for the group aboard the International Space Station. For this reason, Earth science is actually the foundation of our every day...

Here’s a big word: authenticity. Authenticity—the practice of acting and communicating in authentic, that is, genuine ways—can be surprisingly difficult to do. There’s so much at stake. For better or worse, a person’s words and actions not only influence others’ perceptions of him or her, but they also affect the way people feel about themselves. In fact, the pressure to meet others’ expectations and personal agendas can cause people to act outside their true nature, creating friction in their relationships and a divide between their beliefs and actions.  Yet authenticity is at the heart of meaningful expression and genuine interactions. It grounds personal relationships, business affairs, discovery work, and creative pursuits in solid principles that can be felt. More than that, authentic behavior has been shown to benefit a person’s self-esteem and sense of well-being. In her bestseller, “Presence” (Little, Brown and Company, first edition Dec. 2015), social psycho...