Description: In our paper we analyze the regulations and possibilities for creative work included in the teaching of art and mother tongue. We discuss the educational policies that are practiced by and within art education and mother tongue education as well as the values and goals behind these practices. We look into the values and ideologies affecting the teachers' judgments and the way gender becomes visible in them. The way creativity or talent is defined - or who is seen to possess it - is also connected to encouragement and assessment. As some particular kind of activity or a way of doing becomes valued, it may also be given gender specific definitions in the pedagogical and educational discourses. The citation in the title of our paper, borrowed from an art teacher's letter to the researcher, exemplifies one of the ways gender entered the explanations that art teachers and mother tongue teachers gave to student achievement. Our presentation moves in the area of art educational and mother tongue educational research with a feminist, sociological, cultural studies approach. We have both conducted ethnographic fieldwork in secondary schools in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The main data in Tarja Kankkunen's study is based on a period of participant observation in the fall of 1996 during an obligatory 7th grade art course with eleven girl students, seven boy students and their art teacher. The data includes handwritten notes, diary reflections, audio tapes from the lessons and interviews, video shots from the lessons, photographs from the art classroom, and photo reproductions of the student artworks. Kankkunen also used letters and interview material of other art teachers in her study. The research report was published on a cd-rom as both a linear text and a 'multimedia ethnography'. In her one-year ethnography Tarja Palmu observed 7th and 9th graders - and particularly mother tongue lessons. She also conducted interviews and gathered teaching materials and other texts used in these lessons. One part of the data is students' essays and other writings. We will approach our themes by using these doctoral studies as our starting point, reflecting on their data, analysis and interpretations. We will also be including some of our more recent reflections and developments on these issues, re-examinations of our ethnographic data and insight from other relevant studies and literature.Keywords: ethnography, gender, creativity, school, art education, mother tongue education Methodology: Ethnography Conclusions: On process