Teaching creatively makes us better teachers
Jeni Warder on the power of taking a creative approach
Over the summer I had the pleasure of interviewing piano teacher Jeni Warder of the Keys Piano School. An inspiring pedagogue and entrepreneur, Jeni has all sorts of interesting thoughts to share about teaching, collaboration, and ultimately, what it means to be human.
I’ve already shared one wonderful clip from the interview, which you can find here.
In this clip, Jeni discusses the power of taking a creative approach to teaching, and how that circles back and feeds our students’ creativity.
In the post we mention Joanna Garcia’s post about Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, illustrated below:
Jeni’s argument for taking a creative approach is inarguable: it makes us better teachers, which in turn makes our students better students.
In the next video, Jeni explains a little bit about how the structure of her Keys Piano School facilitates student creativity and individuality.
Transcription
Garreth:
I think my first question is really, why do you think teaching creativity is important in the first place?
Jeni
I'm originally, I'm a trained teacher first. So although I was a pianist with a music degree and very much obsessed with music down the line, I then became a primary school teacher and for about 12, 11, 12 years, I followed a very intense path of learning to be a very good teacher, and I think as part of that, you need to really work at looking at every single child's needs and what's going to make them really respond to your teaching in the best way. So it's about the learning, it's not about the teaching. And I think that's a huge flip that I did during that time. It's not about me, it's about them.
And what do they need? And I think when I then returned to piano teaching I just really wanted to bring all that with me because it was so ingrained to my core, to be really thinking outside the box with my teaching. I was always then trained to do better. Keep doing better. And this is what you'll be taught in teaching all the time. This is the headache of being a teacher is if somebody's always on you, do better. So it becomes ingrained in you.
And I think that is where it came from originally. so the creativity is just a byproduct of that. It's what can we do to engage children more? What can we do to explore concepts in a way that potentially is a little bit different because we're not understanding it this way, so how can we understand it? And what makes children tick, and that was different when I was a child, and then when I was teaching the classroom and what it is now. You've got to go with whatever's going on in the generation right now. And there are so many different complicated elements of this that you've got to be on your toes all the time.
And I think creativity, like you say, it is. Just pulls all that together, and that's all there is to it for me.
Garreth
It's interesting. Joanna Garcia, who's a piano teacher—yeah, you know her—she posted something recently, and it was a pyramid of learning, I can't remember the, all the levels of learning, but right at the top was creativity, and her point was that when when you create something, you need everything: you need to have good theory knowledge, you have to have good technique, you gotta have a good concept, and when you do all of those things at once, and if you can do it live, it's just the ultimate test of someone's ability. But it's also really fun, and I think that's the thing that I like about doing it is that you just have a good time with these kids and with the adults as well.
Jeni
Yeah, and I think there's something that you touched on there. I think that there's two different things here, isn't there? There's teaching creatively and then there's teaching to be creative.
And I think that is definitely the top of the pyramid. Whereas teaching creatively is considering that whole pyramid every day. I think if you are teaching creatively, then you're more likely to get children to be inspired by that, and they will maximize their potential to be creative.
I love this idea!! "When you create something, you need everything". All your music knowledge is there, just waiting to come out! Thanks for framing it in this light!!
Fabulous ponders here and topics dear to my heart as a teacher! Thanks for sharing!