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Credit: Sesame Workshop
Education Dive
E is for educator: Sesame Street celebrates 50 years of quality early learning
The show was introduced when it wasn't common for children to attend
preschool, and research has demonstrated those who watched it
experienced better outcomes later in life than those who didn’t.
Linda Jacobson
Oct. 2, 2019
Sara Sweetman, a University of Rhode Island (URI) assistant professor,
still remembers pulling her car over to the side of the road in 2009 to
take an important phone call.
Sesame Workshop was ready to bring science, technology, engineering and
math (STEM) to the most famous street in America, and Rosemarie
Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content, was calling
on experts to advise Sesame Street’s writers on what STEM learning
might look like with a muppet.
Sweetman — who ended up being cast in the role of the science teacher
in a few episodes of Murray’s Science Experiments — remembers urging
the show’s writers to leave the segments less scripted than they might
have preferred.
“Kids are so fascinated by the world around them,” says Sweetman. “Their answers to questions are authentically entertaining.”
A former preschool and kindergarten teacher, who now trains future
elementary teachers and works with school districts as part of URI’s
Guiding Education in Math and Science Network, Sweetman is just one of
many educators and researchers who have played a critical,
behind-the-scenes role in making sure each scene and lesson is
developmentally appropriate and scientifically accurate.
“I often bring one or two advisors to come in and review scripts,”
Truglio says. “They have the expertise, and I want to make sure I’m
getting it right.”
Lessons from Sesame
Getting it right has been Sesame Street’s intention from the beginning
in 1969, when creators Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett Jr. worked
with Harvard University developmental psychologist Gerald Lesser to
build the show’s unique approach to teaching through entertainment.
“If this would be a genuine learning vehicle, they would need a
curriculum,” says Joe Blatt, a senior lecturer in the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, which plans to mark its long relationship with
what was then called the Children’s Television Workshop today with a
“Sesame Live”-like stage show and dinner.
In a practice that continues today, Lesser led the process of bringing
together researchers and content experts with the show’s creative team
for a day-long seminar to plan the curriculum focus for each new season.
“He found ways to get everyone to collaborate,” says Blatt, who was
recruited by Lesser to keep the relationship with Sesame going. In
2017, Sesame Workshop also worked with some of Blatt’s students to
present him with a personalized muppet in appreciation for his role in
sustaining the partnership. The character, he said, occasionally makes
“a guest appearance on Appian Way” through the Harvard campus.
Blatt also teaches a course on how non-classroom environments — such as
libraries, museums and even shopping centers — can contribute to
children’s knowledge of the world. “The lessons that we try to learn
from Sesame are about what makes for successful informal learning.”
It’s a year of significant 50th anniversaries — the Apollo 11 mission,
the Woodstock music festival and the Beatles' "Abbey Road" record to
name a few. But it’s hard to match Sesame Street’s impact on
generations of children — some of whom grew up to be teachers.
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