Comfort, creativity, and community are necessary to foster curiosity in a classroom environment, without which students cannot learn or grow. This concept is not new—the David P. Weikert Center for Youth Program Quality has long advanced belonging as a core value necessary to youth buy-in and advancement. But how does one develop the intangible and highly malleable conditions of “comfort” and “creativity” within curricula or alongside rigorous and challenging work? Further, how does one measure, or even prove, that qualitative experiences such as “comfort” or “creativity” can be encouraged or generated by a set of pedagogical practices any instructor, in any discipline, can learn and apply? The Writing to Learn techniques I use, as disseminated by the Bard College Institute for Writing & Thinking (IWT), advance these necessary conditions for learning and growth. This paper demonstrates how I set out to prove my hypothesis correct, and to support what I suspected was actually happening in my classes so I could more intentionally cultivate comfort, creativity, and community, and encourage other educators with my proof to embrace and explore these pedagogical tools. […]