The paradox of the reluctant student

and the counter-intuitive way to help them get creative

One of the requests that often comes up in the Piano Creativity survey is how to deal with the reluctance we sometimes encounter when we try to get our students to be creative.

This shows up in many ways. Here are some of the ones I encounter most frequently:

• “I’m no good at it”

• “I can’t”

• “I’d love to but it’s not for me”

You can argue with these statements—they are usually incorrect—but I find that in the long-term it’s most effective not to try to persuade the student.

That’s right: don’t try to persuade them to get creative.

I’ll tell you what to do instead below. But first, it’s important to understand the paradox of the reluctant student.

The paradox of the reluctant student is that most of them would love to be creative.

Indeed, they probably actually were creative at some point in the past, but someone has not understood what they were trying to do, has been unkind about their efforts, and has—perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not—humiliated them.

The student has learnt that creativity leads to humiliation.

If we want to help them unlearn that lesson, we have to approach them with kindness, understanding, and patience.

Here are five tips to help free the reluctant student to get creative.

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Understand their fear

Whatever words your student uses to get out of improvising, behind those words is usually fear.

They’re fearful of getting things wrong. They’ve repeatedly been taught—in school, from family, from friends—that getting things wrong makes them stupid. In the most tragic cases, they’ve actually come to accept that they are stupid just because they occasionally make mistakes.

Mistakes don’t make you stupid. Making mistakes is actually one of the primary ways we learn. But more importantly…

In improvisation there is no such thing as a mistake,

there is only “it’s interesting” or “it’s not interesting”.

Most importantly, no-one but your student decides whether it’s interesting or not. If they like what they’re improvising, they should do more of it. If they don’t like it, they should do something else instead. No-one else matters.

That lesson takes a long while to learn. It can take months or even years to teach it. You have to be patient and consistent.

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Take the long view

One of the joys of being a piano teacher is that you often work with students for many years, sometimes as much as a decade or more. You don’t have to persuade them that creativity is fun, you can take your time to show them.

If your student shows a disinclination to be creative, accept their preference. Instead create opportunities for them to see why you and your other students love creativity. In my experience an early reluctance frequently slowly turns into curiosity.

These opportunities might include:

• watching other students improvise or perform their own compositions at student recitals

• including improvisation or composition activities in buddy or group lessons

• taking them to concerts featuring creative musicians (it doesn’t need to be piano music)

• if you’re a composer, sharing your own music with them. I often play my new pieces to my students and ask them what they think. Teenagers in particular give great, if occasionally somewhat brutal, feedback. Take it seriously—which doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them—and make changes to your work if it makes sense. That’s a sign of respect, and they really appreciate it.

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Come to an arrangement

Arrangements are probably the most useful tool for persuading people to get into creativity because almost every student is curious to learn to play a piece that wasn’t originally written for piano. This gives you a wonderful opportunity to explore different ways of creating their chosen piece on the piano.

Ask your student what they want to learn, then look for a couple of different arrangements. Try to find ones with performances on YouTube, so that you can show them to your student. Ask them which one they prefer. If they want to do the challenging-looking one, offer to help them simplify the piece to make it a little more achievable, get them to buy both the difficult and the easy version, then combine the two.

Once you’ve done this several times with your student, they’ll grow in confidence and may become interested in writing their own arrangements. Forrest Kinney’s Puzzle Play books are a great resource for this, and can be combined with lead sheets for a learning experience that is directly relevant to your student’s taste.

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Normalise creativity

It’s crucial to normalise creativity with elementary students. When I teach an elementary student a new scale, I accompany them while they play it (the Faber Scale and Chord book 1 is a good resource for this), and then I say “that rhythm is boring, try using this rhythm instead, and then give them a made-up rhythm to play the scale to. Once they’ve done that for a bit, I’ll say “now freely play some random notes that are in that scale, just to get a feel for it. You can play them in any order but be sure to end with the tonic/home note”

Afterwards, I say “that’s called improvising” and move on to the next activity, as if we had simply done something normal. This shows them that they can make creative changes to what’s written on the page, and in doing so, it normalises the creative process.

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Be sensitive to their age

Kids

If you encourage them to be creative while they’re young they’ll usually continue doing it for life. Every young student I teach does composition and improvisation activities in almost every lesson, right from the first lesson. These are play activities and young kids really enjoy them. This establishes creativity as normal right from the start of their learning process.

Adults

In a way, adults are easy, because most have already got fairly fixed views on the world. When it comes to improvisation or composition, they either do want to do it or they don’t, and you’re probably not going to change their mind. When I first meet prospective adult students I always mention improvisation and composition, and I usually include some simple improvisation when learning scales, but unless they are explicit about wanting to learn composing, I don’t push it. Often they do end up changing their mind, in which case you can make space for them to be more creative, but don’t force it.

Teens

Teenagers are different. Teenagers have been taught all kinds of inhibitions, and they’re in the process of learning even more, so forcing them to get creative can have the exact opposite effect of what you intend.

They are going through tremendous change and are figuring out who they are as a person. It’s crucial that you meet them where they are, emotionally and musically. Giving teenage students plenty of input into repertoire selection is crucial to success, because it demonstrates that you take them seriously. Here are some strategies I use and you might like to try:

1. Ask them to independently select a piece they would like to learn in the future. Tell them they get bonus points if you also like the piece. In the next lesson, work through a lead sheet. In a later lesson, select an arrangement

2. Pick a piece they’ll love, but give them an easier and a more difficult arrangement and allow them to choose their version

If you’re interested in learning more about the psychology of students at different ages, Wendy Stevens of composecreate.com has two excellent training courses that tap into the psychology of child and teenage students. Both courses have excellent reviews. I have taken the teenage one and I recommend it emphatically. It was great.

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Thanks for reading! How do you help your reluctant students to get creative? Let me know in the comments or by sending an email to hello@pianocreativity.com