Interview: Sesame Street

  • Elmo is surprised when he and Rosita find a baby bird as part of Sesame Street's 40th season. (Photo by Richard Termine, courtesy of Sesame Street)

Sesame Street is going green.
The children’s program will
focus on nature education during
its 40th season with the “My
World is Green and Growing”
project. Lester Graham talked
with Carol Lynn Parente.
She’s the Executive Producer
of Sesame Street:

Transcript

Sesame Street is going green.
The children’s program will
focus on nature education during
its 40th season with the “My
World is Green and Growing”
project. Lester Graham talked
with Carol Lynn Parente.
She’s the Executive Producer
of Sesame Street:

Lester: Letters, numbers, social interaction, all things we’d expect from Sesame Street. Why nature?

Parente: We learned by having our academic research advisors that by giving love and exposure to the environment was the best way to hopefully create citizens that will want to take care of it.

Lester: What kind of things will kids be able to pick up from this effort?
Parente: Well, we want to just get them out and exploring the environment and nature in general. And that can be in whatever their environment is. So nature doesn’t necessarily have to be a camping trip, although Elmo does go on one of those in our season 40, but it can be out experiencing what is in their environment, whether it be urban or rural and –

Lester: yeah, I wanted to note that. I mean, Sesame Street is an urban setting for kids whose lives are more about concrete and asphalt than flowers and grass. How will you relate to them?

Parente: Well, when you talk about noticing your environment, those environments and habitats are all around us. So, grass for a child in a suburban big wonderful meadow or field might be what their version of grass is, but there is also grass that pops up between the concrete of the sidewalks in an urban setting. And there are habits of wildlife in every environment you’re in and getting kids to understand that is part of the fun.

[Clip from Sesame Street Episode]

Lester: Some of these environmental issues are complicated, a little scary, take global warming for example. So where do you draw the line on Sesame Street?

Parente: When we talked about how the environment affects our audience, some of the messages that are common with environmental conservationist messages like “Save the Earth” and that’s a really scary concept for very young children because it implies something is wrong and something is going to happen and you don’t what that is and what needs saving. So we really stayed away from those kinds of messages. It’s really about having fun interacting with the environment and I think for our audience, that’s where we really put the focus.

[Clip from Sesame Street Episode]

Lester: So, how often in a typical show will we hear about nature and how long will this nature education effort last on Sesame Street?

Parente: It’s definitely has a presence in every single show in season 40, which is great because it’s a really thorough, um, jump into the curriculum. We’re definitely dealing with it through all of season 40 and the science part of the environment, which it really what it is, a science and nature curriculum, will extent into season 41 as well.

Lester: Carol Lynn Parente is the executive producer of Sesame Street. Have a sunny day!

Parente: Thank you, you as well!

[Clip of Theme Song]

Related Links

Portable Classrooms Get a Makeover

  • When schools run out of room, they often have to put students in portable buildings (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)

When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:

Transcript

When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:

I’ve actually taught a class in one of those temporary, portable classrooms. It was in the early morning at a community college.

Students would walk in droopy-eyed. My job was to keep them engaged and awake.

Not an easy task – the room was either too hot or too cold. And the ventilation system made weird noises.

But, some experts say portables don’t have to be that way. They can be the kind of room that educators actually prefer.

Michelle Gould is a teacher and parent at the Carroll School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. And she teaches in a new kind of portable classroom.

“The air is very clean in here. It smells like the outside. It doesn’t smell like air conditioning or heating. The lighting is very good for not working under natural light. It seems like you’re outside. And it makes a big difference tutoring kids.”

Tutor: “Did you write your last name, Will? No? Very good, nice spacing. Close your books and put your pencil down.”

(sound of kids playing outdoors)

The Carroll School’s main building is a brick mansion from the early 1900s.

It is stately, elegant. The portable next to it is not. It’s boxy, and has a flat, white roof. Kind of ugly.

But, when you walk in to the portable you feel a change. It’s comfortable!

Cliff Cort is president of Triumph Modular, the firm that leases the country’s first green portable classroom.

“This is a vestibule, we think is a necessary ingredient to almost all buildings, because it controls the weather from the outside to the inside.”

Vestibules aren’t typically found in modular classrooms. Neither is the paperless drywall that eliminates mold, or the sensors that “learn” the best way to control the heating.

“If the teacher tends to come in early on Mondays, the building will begin to learn her habits, and then turn on the heating or A-C just before she gets here. And if they start to take off half a day on Wednesdays, the building would start to learn that no one is here in the afternoons, and then they can shut down. So it helps manage the use of the HVAC system.”

Cort points to the domed skylights known as sun tunnels, which bring in daylight.

“But they don’t bring it in a way that’s too harsh. As you can see, this is screened a bit. So it’s diffused light.”

Triumph Modular is just one of the companies making these more environmentally friendly modular classrooms.

Tom Hardiman is director of the Modular Building Institute, a trade association for dealers and manufacturers of commercial modular buildings.

“Improved acoustics. Improved daylighting. There are countless studies out there that show that it does improve the learning environment.”

Hardiman says many of the old-style portable classrooms end up being used for 20 or 30 years. The problem is they weren’t meant to.

But higher-end portables, like the one in Lincoln, Massachusetts, are built to last.

And, because of the modular construction, they’re greener.

“We typically produce much less construction waste material than site-built construction. Because our factories buy in bulk, they can resuse smaller pieces of material. If you’ve been on a construction site, you’ve seen dumpster after dumpster of two-by-fours and drywall and siding sticking out of the dumpster. There’s just not that much waste with modular construction.”

Hardiman says that green portables are the wave of the future.

They’re not the cheapest solution. But Hardiman says they do provide the best learning spaces on campus.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sheryl Rich-Kern.

Related Links

Teacher Brings Adventures to the Classroom

  • Fourth-grade teacher Robin Frisch-Gleason on a research trip to Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Robin Frisch-Gleason)

Kids can watch all kinds of TV shows, movies,
and DVDs about science and nature. But it’s not the
same as talking to a researcher who’s actually been
to remote places in the world. Kyle Norris reports
when that researcher is your fourth-grade teacher it
makes everything very real:

Transcript

Kids can watch all kinds of TV shows, movies,
and DVDs about science and nature. But it’s not the
same as talking to a researcher who’s actually been
to remote places in the world. Kyle Norris reports
when that researcher is your fourth-grade teacher it
makes everything very real:

Okay, so guess where we are.

“Good morning, Slausson School. Good morning.”

It’s a school assembly.

So the woman talking is Robin Frisch-Gleason. She’s a fourth grade teacher. And before
that she was a geologist. And she loves polar regions. She says she loves their vastness
and their emptiness.

A couple months ago she went to Antarctica to study the rocks. And to learn more about
how to teach kids about polar regions.

Now that’s she’s back, she does stuff like this assembly, and tells kids about her trip.
This is her explaining how geologists drill the ice and then pull-up core samples of rock.

“I explain it by saying think about putting a straw in milkshake. You put a straw down.
The very top of the milkshake is the top of the seafloor. And then you press down, maybe
to bottom of cup, and when you cover the straw with your finger and pull it back up, you
have a core of milkshake. And that’s just like we take up a core of rock.”

She says the rocks are like a book, and they tell a story about the past. The scientists in
Antarctica are actually reading the rocks. And they’re trying to find out if the ice melted
when the climate got warmer in the past. So that they can predict what will happen to the
ice as the climate continues to warm in the future.

Robin Frisch-Gleason wants to kids to know that polar regions are vulnerable to climate change.

“And they should be aware of it, and as they grow up it should influence their decisions, their
voting, their career choices, and their own personal behaviors.”

But ultimately she wants to make learning fun. And like alive. Back in her fourth-grade
classroom, the kids do a lot of hands-on activities.

(clapping)

Like imitating the way penguins communicate through penguin calls. But in this case, by
clapping their hands in a certain pattern, and trying to find other kids who have their
same pattern.

In another activity, they wear different types of insulated gloves – like a glove lined with
cotton, or a glove lined with fat – and they stick it into icy water, to see which is warmer.

“It’s fun to stick your hand in things. It’s hands-on like he said, it’s fun doing hands-on
stuff, it’s fun trying out different things. And it’s fun because you’re really trying to
experiment on stuff. You’re experimenting with science and it’s really fun at the same
time.”

Plus the kids say that it’s cool having a teacher go to Antarctica and come back and teach
everybody all these cool things. They say it’s even given them some street-cred amongst other kids at
other schools.

Here’s 4th grader Cole Magoon:

“And it’s kind of like have a famous person be your teacher.”

The kids say that doing fun, hands-on activities actually makes them want to pay more
attention. And this kind of learning not only sparks their critical thinking and problem-
solving skills, but it’s also a great way to get kids psyched about science and math. And
learning from a person who’s actually been in the field seems to amplify all this.

And it gets kids thinking about the world they live in, and the world they’ll have to take
care of.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Creationism in Science Classrooms?

More than a dozen states are thinking about adding intelligent design to their public school science curricula. But at least one state is specifically looking at keeping creationism away from the classroom. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

More than a dozen states are thinking about adding intelligent design to
their public school science curricula, but at least one state is specifically
looking at keeping creationism away from the classroom. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


When biochemist Michael Cox hears about attempts to bring the
religious-based idea called, intelligent design, into the k-12 classrooms,
he worries about an atmosphere less conducive to research. Cox says he
also worries about today’s students.


“If you are confusing students about what science is and what constitutes
science in grade school and high school, those students are less likely to
become scientists… and if they choose to become scientists they’re gonna
have a great deal of difficulty with science college programs.”


Cox is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He supports
a bill in the Wisconsin Legislature that would clarify what could be
taught in public school science classes. The measure would require that
material be testable as a scientific hypothesis and be consistent with
definitions of science developed by the National Academy of Sciences, but
critics say the bill is an attempt to block the teaching of creationism.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Science Center Brings Lessons Home

In school when kids learn about the environment… they often learn
about the devastation of the rain forests in South America; they learn
about lemurs in Madagascar…. and about the melting of the polar ice
caps. They don’t often learn about the environment in their own
hometowns. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports…
some school children are getting a chance to learn about the environment
around them and what they can do to protect it: