The paper discusses the issues of developing schoolchildren's creative potential in Tatar and Kazakh languages and literature classes. The authors define the environmental conditions, including the educational environment, as an important condition for the development of creativity and innovative thinking. According to the Federal State Education Standards (FSES), schooling should be focused on simultaneous achieving subject, meta-subject, and personal results. The authors consider developing creative potential as a process aimed at formation of personal results since the ability to think outside the box can be viewed as a personal quality contributing to self-determination in a profession and as a person. The study shows that modern textbooks of Tatar and Kazakh languages and literature focus on the actualization of creative thinking. At the same time, the authors emphasize that a textbook is only a crutch, while teacher's creative understanding of the tasks proposed in textbooks and methodological guidelines play a much greater role.