I’m always reading articles on creativity and last week, I came across a quote about asking questions and curiosity. This obviously applies to parenting and teaching, but I wondered, “What does can this teach us as adults about how to get our childhood creativity back?”

How Do We Get our Childhood Creative Back?

Curiosity by Danny C Jackson — by Danny.C.Jackson

Tragically, it [asking questions] does stop. By middle school they’ve pretty much stopped asking. It’s no coincidence that this same time is when student motivation and engagement plummet. They didn’t stop asking questions because they lost interest: it’s the other way around. They lost interest because they stopped asking questions.

from The Creativity Crisis by Po Bronson

They Stopped Asking Questions

I know that sometimes I just get so busy that I don’t ask questions. More aptly stated, I get so busy that questions just don’t occur to me or if they do occur, I don’t think I have time to answer them. I can readily attest to the fact that when I ask questions, I am the most creative.

I remember when I was trying to come up for a theme for an intermediate book of piano pieces. I kept asking the questions, “What am I passionate about? What excites me? What inspires me to be a better person? What kind of sounds do teenagers connect with? Why do they connect with those sounds? Why don’t these particular books appeal to my teenage and adults students? What kind of music could I give that would give to the students more than just the gift of music? Is there some other way I can also enhance and influence their life?

All of those questions led me to write the collection of pieces about forgotten American Heroes and Heroines called American Portraits. I am so proud of that book, not just because I love the pieces, but because I feel like its a way I have given the students not only a bit of music, but history, and legacy, and inspiration. Not every book will be like that I am sure, but the best music I have ever written has begun because I started asking questions.

I know that in this phase of my life, I am not asking the volume of questions I should be asking. Perhaps more importantly, I am not taking the time to find or propose answers to my questions.

How do I apply this to teaching?

I think we just need to ask more questions! Again, I think I am the best teacher when I ask these questions: Why doesn’t Jimmy like this piece? What kind of music would really connect with Sally? What kinds of things does Sally like that I could use as teaching tools in her lesson? What is Abby’s favorite color and how could I use that in her lesson? What new thing can we do at our recital this year that will excite the kids and the audience? How can I use peer pressure to help my students?

What kinds of questions are you asking these days?