(gentle music) - Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to reflect on what you would do with a clean slate.

Our guest on this episode is Sara DeWitt, senior vice president and general manager for PBS Kids and Education.

♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ Looking for direction, northern star ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ I'll just step out ♪ ♪ Throw my doubt into the sea ♪ ♪ For what's meant to be will be ♪ - [Becky] Sara DeWitt's spent her formative years in Nashville, including graduation from Hume Fogg High School.

With more than 25 years in public media, DeWitt has played an integral role in the digital transformation of PBS Kids, and is responsible for the strategic direction of all streaming services, website and the vast portfolio of award-winning games and educational apps.

She holds two degrees from Stanford University and is a regular speaker about digital privacy, games and learning.

DeWitt gave a widely shared TED Talk on the safe use of screen time for children.

- What if we start raising our expectations for this media?

What if we start talking to kids regularly about the content on these screens?

What if we start looking for the positive impacts that this technology can have in our children's lives?

- Dewitt has presented at high profile conferences such as South by Southwest and was honored with the Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation and Entertainment Technology.

She recently returned to Nashville as a featured presenter for the Lipscomb Animation Y'all Expo.

Wow.

Sarah, welcome home.

- Thank you.

- This is actually you.

It's thrilling to have you here as a PBS station and to have the general manager and senior vice president of PBS Kids right here.

But Nashville really is home to you.

- It is.

It's my hometown, so I'm super excited to be here.

- Okay.

So tell us about that.

You weren't born in Nashville, but you spent a great deal and probably watched Channel Eight a lot.

- I watched Channel Eight a lot.

So I know that we moved here... My father was in the military, so we moved here when I was around two.

I have a very formative memory of getting a Sesame Street record from a WDCN-8 pledge drive.

- [Becky] Oh, wow.

- It came in the mail because I remember seeing it and asking my mom about it, and then it appeared.

So I definitely have that memory.

And then we left for a while for another posting and I moved back when I was in the fifth grade and was here through high school.

My parents were here through 21.

- Wow.

So tell me then about the schools you went to.

- I went to metro schools.

I went to Walter Stokes for fifth and sixth grade.

It's no longer open.

I think it's administrative buildings.

Then John Trotwood Moore for junior high, and I went to Hume Fogg for high school.

- [Becky] Now Hume Fogg was a magnet school?

- Mhmmm.

- And was that new at the time?

- It was relatively new.

I'm pretty sure that I was the seventh class to go all the way through as a magnet.

But it's also the oldest.

- Yeah.

- Public school in Nashville, or oldest public high school in Nashville, right downtown.

I mean, such a incredible experience going there.

- It's iconic.

Did Dinah Shore go there?

- I think so, right yes.

- Yeah.

I mean, it is iconic and that building is just amazing.

So you have such rich roots here and I think that is, just speaks of the story of public television truthfully.

And how interesting for you to really grow up as a PBS kid and now you're over PBS Kids for everybody.

And how important is that local to national connection?

- Oh, I mean that's what makes PBS so different.

I mean, I am constantly talking about this to people.

There's so many things that differentiate PBS Kids from all the other stuff that's out there.

And one is that we have the child at the center.

We're really thinking about the wellbeing of a child when we're creating content for them.

But another thing is that local connection.

The fact that PBS is made up of these member stations throughout the country, like Nashville Public Television, who then take what we're doing and take it out into the communities, who reach the kids who might not have access to high quality preschool.

Who might really be able to benefit from some of the programs or parents who don't know how to best integrate this kind of technology of questions about screen time.

Things like that.

We have boots on the ground in communities all across the country and that is so different.

I mean, you don't... None of the streamers have that.

None of the other networks really have that kind of local connection, nor do they have local kids who are like engaged in looking at a pledge drive and getting something from their local station the way that I do, that I have that connection.

- [Becky] Right.

- Yeah.

- I think it is so critical and I want to talk to you.

There's so many things I wanna talk to you about.

'Cause you and I have a similar background in that you were studying children's literature actually.

So it's kind of ironic that you went from books to media.

- Yes.

- But how did that happen?

What was that journey?

- So I was studying English, focus in children's lit, and I knew I wanted to do something related to kids.

So I also did a special curriculum that was called Children in Society.

So I was also really thinking about like where children fit into the world.

And through kind of those two programs together, I signed up for an experimental class where they were putting English students with computer science students.

And they made all of the English students take a crash course in HTML.

So this is in the 90s.

So Silicon Valley is taking off.

And they made all the computer science students, it was all guys.

They made them all take improv.

- Oh wow.

- And so they put us together and said the English students understand narrative, but are afraid of the technology.

The people who are doing the technology are finding themselves more and more in situations where they've gotta write a user journey or write a story and they don't know as much about narrative.

What happens if we put these two people together?

And so every week we would be in different configurations and create projects.

And every group that I was in ended up doing a children's project.

We built a game, we built a toy maker.

We built all of these different things.

And it really made me realize there was so much more I could do with children's narrative.

There were things that we could do that were interactive that would engage the child even more.

And at this point, I was already working in the summers at what is now a Westminster Weekday Preschool.

- Here?

- Yes.

Here in Nashville as a three-year-old teacher.

And so I was already thinking about what if you engaged kids in storytelling?

What if you asked them questions and they could respond rather than just reading a book or writing their own story?

And that's what kind of pushed me into digital media, and that's how I got into PBS.

- So did... Okay.

That's fascinating.

Where did you go to college?

- I went to Stanford.

- Right.

You went to Stanford.

So do you think the fact that you were in a area that was very high tech, thinking high tech, did that make a big difference?

- Absolutely.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean I think that's why they were thinking, let's have English students learn HTML.

- So are you kind of geeky now?

Are you a computer nerd?

- Absolutely.

Yes.

(laughing) And I always had been even before.

I mean, I love literature.

I was really interested in children's publishing, but I was really early on email, partly because I was so far from home, and was trying to think about how to communicate with more of my friends.

But I've always been really interested in tinkering.

So my first role at PBS was working on websites.

I was hired to work on the brand new PBS Kids website.

This was in 1999.

- [Becky] Wow.

- And there was a show called Mr.

Rogers Neighborhood, and Fred Rogers wanted to bring his neighborhood of Make-Believe into the digital space.

And so I was hired as the second employee on the PBS Kids website to help develop that and come up with a framework for how would you take these shows and make them interactive, and how would you also make sure that they meet the same educational goals of the show itself.

So in the case of the neighborhood of Make-Believe, we were thinking about Fred Rogers amazing social and emotional learning curriculum and how that would play out in a digital space.

What you could walk through?

What if you could look up at that tree house?

What if you could stand in front of the clock and click on Daniel?

What would he say to you?

What would a child expect?

And it was just a wonderful experience and really fun to think about that.

- So did you work with Mr.

Rogers?

- I never met him, but I worked with his team really closely.

And at the end of the project, he mailed me, or his team mailed me a signed mouse pad.

That is a Mr.

Rogers Neighborhood mouse pad.

And it says "For Sara with gratitude."

And I have it framed in my office.

Yes.

- Wow.

Sarah.

So you started 27 years ago about there.

That, I mean, so many ways, that was such a beautiful era.

I mean, there's such a beautiful era all through PBS.

What would you say is just, what's so different about those early days to now and what's similar?

- Well, I think when I was starting the web was taking off.

And so we were in this moment of experimentation.

What does it mean to be public media, and what does it mean to be public media for children on this new platform?

How do we think about it differently?

And I kept finding parallels to when public media started in the 60s.

I mean, if you think about PBS Kids, Mr.

Rogers certainly was a seminal historical figure there in the legacy.

And so was Joan Ganz Cooney, who's the creator of Sesame Street.

And they were both thinking about this brand new medium.

About how they could experiment with it.

In the case of Fred Rogers, it was, how do I talk directly to a child through this screen?

In the case of Joan Ganz Cooney, a lot of that research that Carnegie Report on preschool, and how television could support was she was thinking about things like, how do we use some of the new ideas that are coming out in television around even things like advertising to then help kids learn letters and numbers.

And so they were really tinkering and experimenting with it.

And so when we were working on the website, we kept hearkening back to that.

Okay, how do we tinker with this in a way that is going to really help move the needle and help have an impact?

We used to always say every new technology is an opportunity for learning.

What can we do with it that isn't what the commercial space will do?

But what's a public television way to do this?

And I think it really came out in those early days around gaming, because games certainly were really big on CD ROMs.

They were kind of beginning to take off on the web, but most games for kids were about selling something.

- Right.

Right.

- And not about trying to teach them something.

A lot of the games related to television shows were just to promote the show.

And we said, okay, what if we were to take the curriculum of Arthur, or the curriculum of Cyber Chase or Clifford the Big Red Dog and extend that curriculum in a website space?

So I have to say, I mean, these were incredibly fun times with producers, because they were experts in linear television.

I remember sitting down with the creator of Arthur, based on the Mark Brown books, but Carol Greenwald is the one who, the executive producer who took it to television.

And just walking through with her, what could you do with this curriculum in a game?

What if Arthur finally could have a play date with a kid?

And what if the kids who really connect with DW could have a chance to spend more time with her, what would they do?

And it was just this big creative explosion opportunity for those creators to think about their characters and how they wanted kids to be able to play with them in a different way to try to get those same curriculum goals across.

- Because they really weren't... I mean, if they were creating it, they really were creating it for television.

- [Sara] Exactly.

- And they were using often like a book series with Clifford, with Arthur, but you were challenging them to think differently.

- Exactly, yes.

- How challenging was that?

- I mean, in some cases there were some producers who, this was really hard to get away with.

But this is the story.

I don't wanna shift the story.

- [Becky] Right.

Right.

- And other producers who really were able to think about, okay, this is another extension.

So I think, if I think about today in the ways that we look at it.

The Show Odd Squad, which is focused on math.

That show really began to look at the different platforms and different technologies as a way to expand that world.

So if you watch Odd Squad on television, you see these great stories of agents solving math problems in weird and unusual ways.

And kids love to see that the kids are in control.

That the agency is all kids, but they're helping grownups.

If you go on the website, you do exactly what kids wanna do, which is you become an agent, you create your avatar, and you're playing those games and they're math games and you're solving math problems.

But you're doing it that way.

If you go look at Odd Squad on YouTube, you've got agents talking directly to kids.

They made a whole new series of YouTube videos called Odd Tube, where the agent is talking directly to the kids about their life and showing them what's in their desk and showing them all the weird things.

And for one season taking comments and responding to kids.

And then if you listen to the Odd Squad podcast, you're tuning into the Odd News Network and you're listening to a radio show that's broadcast to Odd Squad agents across the country, across the world, excuse me, telling them about what's coming up next in the Odd Squad universe.

And so kids then can dip into all of these different connections to a show and still learn math in every single one.

- And it's all PBS.

- And it's all PBS and it's all free.

- Yeah.

- And non-commercial because that's how we operate.

But I think that's the kind of experimentation that we in public media are drawn to do.

Really think about how can we do this differently and how would we do this in a public media way?

- That's right.

That's right.

Yeah and we're gonna run out of time before I get through all my questions, but well, two questions.

- [Sara] Sure.

- One is, research is critical.

From the time of Sesame Street to now, with all the shows that you have on right now, that is critical and it shapes everything you do right?

- [Sara] Absolutely.

- So tell me just a little bit about what is the emphasis in research?

- Well, we wanna make sure that everything that we do is really going to best meet the needs of kids.

So we're doing what we call formative research, where we're testing stories and ideas.

There's not a show on PBS Kids that didn't first have a pilot, that kids watched and gave feedback about.

And that we then tested a little bit about what did they learn from it.

And sometimes that's make or break for a show.

A show might not move forward based on the pilot.

But that's really critical.

Same with games.

We do game testing with kids.

Sometimes it's just on paper.

It's an idea of how the game might go before we even start coding.

So there's that to make sure that we really have got it right.

And then we've been really fortunate through the years to have funding to do summative evaluations, where you go out and recruit lots of kids and do pre and post-testing on what they learned from a show.

And that's where I think public media and PBS Kids really stand out.

Because you see the kids who watched Super Why had statistically significant gains in their literacy knowledge.

Kids who watched Odd Squad really made a difference in math.

I mean, these things are measurable and that helps us really be able to make the case for why it's so important.

But also to be able to show the whole industry how much can be done with television, how much can be done with games.

I really feel like part of what we are doing is raising the bar for everybody to show here's what's possible with media.

And that same kind of research happens in the things that local stations do on the ground.

There have been studies about what happens when you go to a workshop with the station.

What happens when a parent really engages with this content with kids over time?

How does that affect their learning?

And the gains are always positive.

So it's really incredible work to see.

- Well, and parents have a choice with their media.

They have a choice and they can help their children make good choices.

'Cause there's so much out right now that are vying, so many things are vying for our attention.

And I get really anxious when I see a very young child on the airplane or in the grocery store, and I can tell they're not on PBS Kids, and I know the content they're watching is not appropriate.

You did a TED Talk.

And in fact, I hope everyone will watch your Ted talk about the importance of making those kinds of choices, looking for what makes a difference in the learning.

What's your greatest takeaway from that Ted Talk?

What was that like for you?

- It was so interesting to have to like really hone a message.

But I think what was so interesting also is the feedback.

That some people watched it and just said, wait, screen time is bad.

I don't know how to even take what you're trying to say.

And other people reached out to me.

I mean, even just earlier this week, I got an email from someone saying, "I just saw this and it's making me think differently about how we should be creating content for kids."

And that's what I think we're hoping to do, is really spur conversation.

So that was kind of a big takeaway right there.

- Well, I loved it.

And one thing that I took, as you said adults pick up their phone 50 times a day, and that's probably a low bar actually.

I keep thinking that adults look like they have phones as hands, because we just are never putting them down.

And so children are gonna emulate that.

And we do want them to make good choices.

- Right.

And I mean, we want them also when they're in the grocery store, to actually be looking around the grocery store.

- That's right.

- And engaging with their parents.

- And having conversation.

- Picking out the oranges and the apples.

And why does this have this?

And I think we are the only television network that is looking at trying to get kids to learn something so they step away from the screen.

- That's right.

That's right.

- And that's something I think is really important for people to understand too.

Our goal is to help kids learn and inspire a passion for wanting to take that learning away.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- All right.

You know the premise of this show, Sara, is Clean Slate.

And it can be for you personally or professionally or maybe even for your community, and you can define community.

So what would you say is your clean slate?

- If I had a clean slate?

- Yeah.

If you had a clean slate, or if you wanted a clean slate in one of those areas.

- Well, one of the things that I think about that was so unusual in my upbringing is... We talked about, we're both early childhood educators.

My mother was an educator.

My grandmother founded a daycare center in Elizabethton, Tennessee.

My grandfather was an elementary school principal.

I tell you these things just to say that when we sat around the dinner table at family gatherings, children were an important topic of conversation.

They were discussed as if it was the most important thing, is that you made sure that things were great for kids.

And it wasn't until I was in these classes in college where, public policy professors are saying, unless you have kids, you really aren't voting in favor of kids.

And because kids can't vote, they really don't have a say for how their public schools are funded or what's good for them.

It really made me realize that people aren't looking out for kids in an advocacy kind of way.

And that's what I think I always thought that I would be doing.

When I was thinking about this question, I was like, well, the truth is like we are doing this.

PBS Kids plays a really critical part in helping make sure that kids are being focused on and are getting that kind of attention for how they can grow and really thrive.

So yeah.

Kids are in a terrible place right now.

- So for you a clean slate would be for community of children?

- Yes.

- To give then-- - And support of children.

For communities to rally around kids.

- Boy, that is, that's deep and important.

Your journey as being the head now of PBS Kids in a time that's very challenging.

You've lost a lot of funding, you've lost a lot of staff due to the federal funding rescission, which was so important to the work.

What do you see, or what do you hope for in the future for PBS Kids?

- Well, I see a huge rally.

I have to say that.

I mean, we have had such an outpouring, as I'm sure you all have at Nashville public television too, of people saying this programming made a big difference in my life.

We just got a graduation announcement the other day from a young woman who said, I'm going to veterinary school and I'm sending you my announcement because I want you to know that it's because of watching Wild Kratts on PBS Kids.

You made a real difference.

And so kids are sending in their allowance.

People are writing in to say, this programming makes such a difference.

And so that's what we're feeling right now.

And I'd love to see even more of that.

I would love that even more people would know that this free, incredible resource exists for them.

A place that really is putting kids at the center and really thinking about how kids can thrive in this world.

- Carl the Collector, such a special show.

What are some things you're excited about for future shows?

- [Sara] Future shows-- - For that show and future shows?

- Yeah.

So Carl is incredibly special show and one that is really connecting with families across the country.

So excited about more things like Carl.

We are really focused right now on literacy.

We just launched a show called Phoebe and Jay.

That is about environmental literacy.

Like how do you use words around you to navigate and how do you help preschoolers use that literacy to find their way in the world, even using a crosswalk.

And then we have a reboot of Super Why coming up.

Super Why's Comic Book Adventures is coming back to really focus on those basics.

So I'm really excited about the literacy work and the ways that we're gonna continue to really support school readiness through these kinds of shows and through the games that come alongside.

- That's awesome.

And the minute we've got left, I know you have children.

Your children, I know you have raised them to be PBS Kids.

- Yes.

- What are they excited about with PBS?

- Oh my gosh.

They were watching the American Revolution, and making connections to things they were learning from school.

I have a 14-year-old who loves history, who heard about it and wanted to sit down and watch.

And I love that.

I love that he is a curious kid who wants to learn more.

But they also, I love that they think it's really cool that their mom works for PBS Kids.

It's not something that they are at all embarrassed by, but we are proudly.

- Well, we are proud of you, Sara.

We're so proud that you're from Nashville and we hope that you'll come back.

- Absolutely right.

- All right.

- Yes.

- Thank you friend.

- Thank you.

(gentle music) ♪ I've thrown away my compass ♪ ♪ Done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around in one direction ♪ - All right, Sara.

I know that this is not your first time in the studio because when you were in high school, you were on a show called Heart of The Matter.

Tell me about it.

- I was.

I was.

I was invited to be on this show and I was on a panel.

I was the only kid on it, and I can't remember, I was a freshman or a sophomore in high school.

But it was a conversation about the magnet system.

And apparently I didn't know at the time, but apparently it was a little controversial to think about, like, is it a brain drain, to take some kids out and put them in another special school?

And I was there to represent the experience of a magnet student.

So it was my first time, I think, ever on TV.

- And it turned out okay, right?

- It turned out okay.

And here I am.

Right.

- And here you are, and I hope you'll keep coming.

(gentle music)