Jearnine Wagner's Education Style

Black and white photograph of Jearnine Wagner on Trinity University's campus circa 1963.

1968 book entitled Creating Theater by Ruth Byers and featuring material created by Jernine Wagner. The book provides teacher guides for original student plays and describes the general steps of student playwriting. Creating Theater includes examples of real student plays from the Baylor Children’s Theater under the supervision of Wagner.

Jearnine Wagner's lesson plans for theater program from 1959. The lesson plan includes the use of different art mediums and emphasizes movement, space, and color.

Jernine Wagner’s Approach to Teaching 

Jearnine Wagner was the Director of Baylor’s Children’s Theater in Dallas, creator of Trinity University’s children’s theater program, and founder of the Learning About Learning program. Wagner’s teaching strategies focused on fostering students’ creativity. In her theater classes, Wagner implemented various experiential learning techniques such as reflection to engage her students with the material. Ruth Byer’s 1968 book, Creating Theater, includes Wagner’s work as examples. In this way, Creating Theater serves as a teacher's guide,  suggesting that students create, write, and design original works of theater. Wagner promoted this idea because it would allow students to connect more deeply with the material. Wagner stated that the students must have creative control of their projects and defined the teacher as a guide. As she argued, original theater “requires a discussion leader, not a lecturer.” In this way, Wagner promoted an encouraging and experiential environment in which students felt valued and supported.