What Mister Rogers can teach us about teaching

Whom can educators look to as an exemplar of kind and compassionate teaching? Gabrielle Vogt and Ann Monroe explore the life and work of Fred Rogers as an unconventional teacher. By focusing on relationships, treating each child as unique, honoring children’s emotions, and communicating a positive message, Rogers showed care for children and their development. The authors encourage teachers to follow his example to create an environment that addresses children’s emotional needs and well-being.

Broadcasting the Diva of Dubbing

For children growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood playback artist Marni Nixon was known not as the singing voice of Deborah Kerr or Audrey Hepburn, but as “Marni,” the cheerful mother of an incorrigible yellow puppet named Norbert, whose problems she solved on local television with a story and a song. The award-winning Boomerang (1975–1981) reveals how the goals of educational television were linked to expectations of the maternal voice embodied in a figure familiar to parents from the Hollywood musical. The placement of Marni Nixon in a lineage of televisual children’s ventriloquists such as Shari Lewis and Fred Rogers further destabilizes the voice that would only appear to be finally united with a body. This chapter analyzes Boomerang’s structure and style alongside parenting manuals from the period to argue that the fissures in viewers’ perception of Marni Nixon reflect a shift in the cultural understanding of how mothers should interact with their children, a change surprisingly dependent on discourses of ventriloquism.

Exploring STEAM teaching in preschool using Fred Rogers approach

The culture of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) teaching is still new among preschool teachers. Nevertheless, STEAM teaching is seen as challenging to be implemented if there is no clear guideline prepared by qualified experts. Therefore, a need analysis on STEAM teaching strategies ought to be conducted to ensure the implementation of STEAM teaching its related problems may be attended. This research aimed to explore experts’ perceptions about Fred Rogers’ STEAM as a STEAM teaching strategy approach as a considered method to be taught in preschools. This need analysis employed semi structured interviews with four experts. The obtained findings were categorized and analysed thematically. Five themes were identified: 1) features and needs of STEAM education, 2) inquiry-based learning 3) learning by doing activities, 4) interesting and systematic teaching strategies and 5) suitability with children’ development and practices. The research findings benefit preschool teachers in selecting and implementing STEAM teaching strategies based on experts’ opinion. Besides, it is anticipated to help teachers to conduct meaningful and effective STEAM teaching with preschool children.

Hello, Neighbor: Carl and Fred Rogers and a Process of Person-centered Mentorship

Though professionally unaware of each other, Carl and Fred Rogers had much–including religious upbringings, early career interests in child well-being, and primary aspects of their philosophies on life and human potential–in common. Carl Rogers became one of the most influential American psychologists to date, in formulating person-centered approaches to psychotherapy and life, and as a children’s television host Fred Rogers was–and has remained, in the eyes of generations of kids and adults alike over the last 50 some-odd years–in many ways perhaps the most exemplary late 20th century embodiment of Carl Rogers’ proposed way of being. Here, I–a mentor to motivated students in the meteorological and psychological sciences, and others in wider life–discuss my discovery of the person-centered approach, via childhood exposure to Fred Rogers; and provide perspective on the ways the person-centered approach can be utilized to foster more effective and meaningful mentorship and learning-based relationships.