Creating Children’s Media
Instructed by Julie Dobrow at Tufts University
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If you were an elementary school student in the 1990s or early 2000s, it’s likely that you remember a class period in which your science teacher, too tired to instruct, rolled a boxy VCR to the front of the classroom and popped in a Bill Nye the Science Guy tape. While Nye has since moved on to pursue new scientific endeavors, other shows from the same time period — like Arthur and Sesame Street –– have remained on air, serving an audience of millions of children and their parents, many of whom also grew up watching the show.
What is the reason for this lasting intergenerational appeal?
In Dr. Julie Dobrow’s opinion, there are a number of factors which contribute to the success of a children’s show: representation, physical humor, and a dual-focus on providing entertainment to both children and adults, to name a few. Tufts University students participating in Dr. Dobrow’s Creating Children’s Media course explore these topics, working hands-on with members of local media outlets to develop and create their own children’s media content.
Creating Children’s Media
School: Tufts University
Course: Creating Children’s Media
Instructor: Julie Dobrow
Course Description:
What makes for a great children’s television show? A wonderful film adaptation of a classic children’s book? An ad that a child will remember (to say nothing of making them want to purchase a product)? A truly educational app? Where is the line between toys and media, or is there one anymore? In this course, we’ll try to find answers to these questions.
By melding some knowledge about what makes children’s media developmentally appropriate with what makes it educational and, importantly, entertaining, we will begin to craft our collective responses to “best practices” for creating children’s media. But this isn’t a course in which you’re only going to read and research what makes for great children’s media; this is a course in which you’re going to try your hand at creating some of it. Besides, a basic tenet of media literacy is that you not only know how to critique media, but also know something about how to make it. It’s my hope that through this class you’ll not only learn something about how to make quality children’s media but in so doing, you’ll become more media literate.
This course will combine learning how children’s educational media products are developed using formative and summative research with a practice-based approach to applying principles of child development and educational learning theory in creative ways. We’ll examine award-winning children’s media, hear from people who created it and craft our own. We’ll workshop scripts for children’s TV shows, learn what goes into pitching a book for film and build proposals for interactive media products.
Ask the Instructor: Julie Dobrow
Why did you initially decide to teach Creating Children’s Media?
Creating Children’s Media was born out of another course I’d previously designed, which examined the way that children appear in mass media and the kind of images that appear in children’s media. In that course, we discussed the effects that exposure to media at a young age might have on a child’s development and looked at the regulations which under-guard children’s media within the United States. As I was strategizing for that class, it became very clear to me that there was something missing. And what was missing was the ability for students to actually try their hands on what they were learning. So, I decided to design a course focused on actively creating children’s media.
This has been just a super fun class for me as well as for the students, because we all get to get inside of our ten-year-old heads and relive our childhoods in various ways. So there were a lot of discussions about theories of childhood development, but also a lot of opportunities to express creativity.
I believe that the best children’s media works on two levels simultaneously: it has to be something that kids are going to respond to, but it also has to be something that their older siblings, or even their parents, would like as well. Something like Sesame Street, for instance, works so well because there are puns that adults understand and think are hilarious. And then there’s this physical humor that children think is funny.
Arthur is another good example — it’s been so popular for so long because it works on two levels. There was an episode of Arthur that featured Garfunkel from the musical duo ‘Simon & Garfunkel’. And that reference really isn’t meant to speak to children; sure, he’s been depicted as whatever animal they’re meant to be. But his presence there is geared towards parents who might be watching, while his character and arc are written in a way that children really respond to.
The course seems to be a pretty even mix of media, early childhood development, and psychology. What department do you teach in primarily?
The class is cross-listed in the Child Study & Human Development department as well as being housed within Film & Media Studies. Then, because we discuss issues of media literacy frequently, it’s also cross-listed in the Civic Studies department. In the 21st century, media literacy is really a core civic skill.
As we are a liberal arts university, Tufts students don’t get to take a lot of hands-on courses. I’m very proud of the fact that a number of students who have taken my class have actually gone on to pursue careers in media. One of the coolest things about the class for me has been that it attracts students from all across Tufts — it’s not just people who major in Film & Media Studies, or in Child Development. I’m on sabbatical this semester, so I’m not teaching, but last spring I had students who were Bio majors…. people from the engineering school…. people who were studying philosophy. For some of those students, this class was a game changer.
I had one student who I’m thinking of in particular, who had a science background and took this class for elective credit as a senior. At the end of the term, he just said to me: “I fell in love. This is what I really want to do. I don’t want to go to medical school; I want to go into children’s media.”
Do you ever modify your syllabus based on the interests and backgrounds of your students?
Because children’s media is such a dynamic field, I’m changing the class every year. It’s never been the same twice. I try to let each student tap into whatever they are interested in. People find that they actually can follow their interests, use their research to develop their own stories, and combine those two passions. For me, that’s what a liberal arts education is all about.
What kind of assignments do your students undertake?
One assignment that I designed for the class was that everybody wrote a spec script. In the past I’ve given people a choice: they can either come up with a script that’s completely their own design, or they can do a spec script for an episode of Arthur. Some students love doing this assignment so much that they do both.
There are a number of different assignments like that, which I’ve intended to act as hands-on learning experiences for my students. In one of the first projects in the class, students are divided into groups and they need to come up with a children’s book to then pitch it as a movie. They start by researching which books have not been made into movies yet, then complete all of the research that you would need to do to create a working Hollywood pitch. That includes figuring out who they’d want to have star in their film, who they’d want to have write the script, who’d they want directing it. What would it ultimately cost to bring this movie to life? And then, how do you come up with a multimedia pitch that really expresses your concept and will resonate with a production studio? I bring in a panel of film producers and other media experts who actually listen to these kinds of pitches all the time. Students pitch them and then receive critiques on their pitches.
For the final assignment in the class — in pre COVID times, anyway — I would often take students on a field trip over to WGBH, which is our local public television station in Boston and one of the major creators of children’s media content in this country. We’d visit some of the digital division team members there and participate in a hackathon where the folks from WGBH would give my students an actual problem that they’re working on, which they’d then break up into teas to solve.
I think it’s very important for students to hear not just from me, but also from professionals in the field. I bring in a lot of guest speakers from different children’s media organizations. I’ve been teaching within this area for a long time, so I have this little army of former students who are working at places like Disney and Sesame Workshop. They can speak much more accurately than I can about what it’s actually like to get a job in the field, and how to parlay this wonderful, rich, liberal arts education that they’re getting at Tufts university into a career in children’s media.
I have to imagine that over the past year, the issue of representation within children’s media has become a more prominent topic of conversation — you know, children aren’t developing normally within the quarantine. These really young kids aren’t being socialized in the way that they traditionally would be, in schools or in parks. So for their first understanding of how to interact with others is what they see modeled on a television or laptop screen.
I think that in the industry, things are starting to turn around. Media has been heading in a far more positive direction than I would have said if you’d asked me this question a year ago.
I spent last summer working with one of my students on what we called the ‘Content Creators Project’, where we interviewed people who write, direct, produce, and animate children’s media about their thoughts and practices on diversity and inclusion. And — not only is this now a mindset which is held by the people creating these programs, that but it’s actually a goal. So it’s a very exciting time for people to be getting into the field of children’s media.
In another part of my work at Tufts, I’m one of the co-principal investigators of a long running research project called the Children’s Television Project, where we look at issues of gender, race, ethnicity, age, and disability in children’s animated programming. We know a lot about the sort of images that are presented in this content and, perhaps even more importantly, the ones that aren’t there. And the images or characters which have been portrayed in highly stereotyped or even racist manners.
We know that it is critically important for kids to see people who look and sound like themselves represented in the media they consume. Television is a tool that allows children to learn about the world, and about people who are different from their own families. We talk about this a lot in class: what you would need to do to ensure diversity is present at every level of production from the inception of ideas to the writing to the production and also in the boardroom as well. And why it’s important to have diversity not just in front of the camera, but also behind it
That’s great, and long overdue. Can you give me an example of a show that’s doing D&I right?
Oh, totally — the example that I’m using most often now is actually Molly of Denali. The show is on its second season now, and it’s the first nationally-distributed show that’s about that features and indigenous character. One of the things that is so wonderful about Molly of Denali, is not just the product itself — which is, you know, high quality animation and entertaining on two levels simultaneously — but the way in which the show is created is itself quite innovative.
The Boston WGBH team worked in very close collaboration with a team made up of First Nation and Indigenous advisors based in Alaska. And people were involved at every step of the production process, so that there were writers and producers and content advisors looking at everything, you know –– from the scripts, to the design, as well as the website, games and other digital peripherals ––that were developed for the show.
I think the big takeaway for everybody who worked on Molly of Denali was: it’s critical to have the people whose stories are being told take a major role in telling those stories.
Start to finish, how long does it take you to design a course like Creating Children’s Media?
Really, I’m always thinking about it. It’s not that I designate a certain period of time in which to plan a new class — it’s more something that starts percolating. In the case of this class I had to pitch the concept to my department chair, who let me teach it for a term as an experimental class. It wound up being so successful that I was told to go ahead and put in a formal proposal to make it into a permanent class — which I gladly did.
But I am always thinking about how to change it, so the course is never a fully finished product. It’s always, always a work in progress.
And that keeps it dynamic and relevant for the students as well. Final question for you: if you could have your students leave this class knowing just one thing that you’ve taught them, what would it be?
It would definitely be: how truly important it is to have authentic, diverse voices in children’s media.
It’s not impossible for people who come from one background to be telling a story about someone who comes from another background, but what is critical is to be having sort of real and authentic input from people. And that really should happen at every level of the production process. •
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