- Hi, welcome to Teachable Moments Spark the Learning.

I'm Denice Pazuchanics from WQED's Education Team.

- And I'm Elaine Volpe from the Bethel Park Public Library.

- So what are Teachable Moments?

We all know that Teachable Moments are those times when we capitalize on a child's curiosity in everyday learning opportunities.

So Teachable Moments are a series of videos created by WQED that were those sparks for learning in short, one-minute videos.

They came about during COVID when everybody was stuck at home.

Parents and caregivers were very concerned about how to educate their child.

They were knee deep in actually doing a lot of the teaching at home, and yet still wanted to be able to capitalize, not only in learning the core subjects as they were teaching their child, but also a way to make sure that their child still remained curious and wanted to learn on topics that were inspired by themselves, where they just wanted to have an opportunity to still have those engagement opportunities with their children.

So the WQED Education Team came up with an idea to have teachers from home make these one-minute videos.

We started with educators, local educators, and asked them just using a cell phone to create a short one minute video on a topic of their choosing that we could push out to caregivers and sort of use as this opportunity to reignite those learning opportunities.

So let's find out how Teachable Moments worked.

- So when Denice first approached me about the idea, I was immediately on board because I too realized what a burden the pandemic was putting on families.

And I too noticed right away the frustration and the burnout that was not only happening on part of the students, but on the caregivers as well.

They were struggling with how to support their student learning at home, while still maintaining their own jobs and maintaining their home and health concerns for the family.

It was a lot on the caregivers.

So that was kind of the why and the how of Teachable Moments.

We need to alleviate some of this stress and frustration and anxiety that is surrounding learning and just make learning more fun again, again to spark that curiosity and engage families in a new and fun way where they are learning together.

So that was the why behind it, and we're gonna get a little bit more into the how of it as well.

But the other piece of it that I wanna mention is also the community collaboration.

We connected with community partners to make the videos happen, but it was also really important that we connected families because as we all know, the pandemic kind of prevented us from seeing our loved ones.

We weren't saying hello to our neighbors anymore, we just weren't having that in-person connection anymore.

So even though we were doing this virtually over the computer, families were still able to kind of connect together, share their struggles and their concerns, and also share ideas and kind of have that interaction, that personal interaction that we were lacking during that time and that we felt was so important, not just to the parents and givers, but to the kids too.

- So the goal of Teachable Moments was really to provide these educational opportunities using these community created content on a variety of topics.

Like I said, when we originally started, we were having these community partners just film themselves.

You will notice that over the course of two years, which is how long this project actually ran, the videos content and the production value did indeed go up.

That's because WQED is a multimedia station.

And so we did actually have a production team as we moved forward with the videos.

But while that is great and the videos are amazing, it's not exactly necessary because really what it is, is it's the community partner having a chance, having a chance to have their voice elevated and have them be able to deliver content and have them be able to be a content creator on their own.

We also wanted to engage these families who were struggling with at home learning during COVID.

Again, just because it was a new way to learn an interesting topic for a child.

We know that post COVID, families are still trying to engage their child.

That's something that caregivers have always been doing, and these videos are still relevant and still usable in a variety of topics and in a variety of ways.

We also wanted to provide caregivers with this- And like Elaine said, that was super important.

You'll find out that one of the ways that we did that was actually having a virtual experience for caregivers and sort of an opportunity just for them to talk to other caregivers who were in the same spot as them.

And again, that interaction between caregivers is important, whether it's happening during COVID or whether it's not happening during COVID, that chance to meet with people who are in the same place as you are is super important, as you know.

And finally to equip caregivers with the tools to recognize those Teachable Moments.

Again, sometimes as a caregiver, you are so bogged down with all of the responsibilities and all of the jobs and all of the learning, that it really is important to be able just to notice when that spark is happening with a child and how to capitalize on those interests of a child.

And so these Teachable Moments kind of give you that opportunity to capitalize on those learning opportunities and be able to use resources to, yeah, add additional materials, add additional ways, and QBD kind of and PBS gives you that opportunity to find additional resources on those variety of topics.

So what we wanna do now is we actually want to, I'm gonna stop this for a second and I'm gonna share in a different way.

We want to show you some of these Teachable Moments.

There are 40 of them in our, in our... - Collection.

- Collection.

Thank you so much.

There are 40 of them in our collection.

Thanks.

And you will see that we actually put them into subject areas.

So we have Expression and Communication, Visual Arts, STEM, Social Studies.

They cover a variety of topics.

Most have at least two or three videos in each one of those topics.

We do not want to show you all of them, but we did wanna show you a couple of them and just highlight a few.

So of course some of these topics are always going to be important.

We have some including social and emotional wellness, and I'm just gonna show you some of those videos that are in there, including, It's Okay to be Silly, How to Make a Stress Ball, Make Sure That You Find Your Center of Breathing, The Importance of Being Organized.

All of those things are super important, as you know, to social and emotional wellbeing.

Each video, like I said, is only a minute long, but each video will also come with an extension activity.

So you will see an extension resource where...

The other thing that we actually haven't mentioned yet, but that each one of these videos did have a call to action for parents and caregivers, and that was sort of an important piece.

It was the way for them to go out and actually try what they had learned in that video.

And so each one had that opportunity for caregivers to engage directly because the call to action was given or a way to sort of expand upon or find additional activities that would coincide or go along with that video.

So those were the social and emotional videos.

We also wanted to show you that we also concentrated on health and wellness.

And again, I just want to show you the difference in, not quality, but how it looked.

Sorry, I don't wanna... Oh, there they are.

There were some of these ones that were filmed by teachers at home.

So you can see this one was done with an iPad.

I don't know if you can see it up close, but this one was done with an iPad at home.

This one was actually done early in the pandemic when she did an outside obstacle course.

Again, some of them have a little bit different quality because we did have our production team involved with some, but not all of them were like that.

So that's also kind of a nice variety and a nice way to make sure that you can actually create these videos on your own.

The last group that I just wanna talk about in this little section is we did then, as the pandemic wore on and as we kind of, things opened back up again, one of the things that we really noticed was a place or a place to need school readiness.

And so we, just talking to different partners, we were able to reach out and we actually really liked this collection.

It has a lot of things that sort of are ways to talk to your child.

There's one just about getting ready for kindergarten.

There's one about the importance of being organized.

There's one just about modeling mistakes, which I really, I wanna show you right now.

I think this is something that caregivers struggle with and don't exactly know how to talk to their child about.

Everybody knows that everybody makes mistakes, but what are the words to actually use?

And so this from one of our partners, a school guidance counselor, I thought did a great job sort of explaining that to caregivers and giving them the tools that they needed to be able to talk to their child about it.

- Hi, my name is Jen Ford and I'm the School Counselor at Wylandville Elementary.

And this is my Teachable Moment.

As adults, we know that everyone makes mistakes.

Kids, however, struggle with many different feelings surrounding their mistakes.

They may feel embarrassed, worried, or frustrated.

So how can we make kids more comfortable with making mistakes?

By modeling what we do when we make them ourselves.

So next time you find yourself in the midst of a mistake when your child is around, name the mistake, describe how it happened, and talk through the steps that you are taking to fix it.

Your child will take note of your problem solving process and may even pitch in their own ideas to help.

The more they see problem solving in action, the more empowered they will feel when it's their turn to be the problem solvers.

So next time you make a mistake, don't sweep it under the rug, celebrate it, bring attention to it.

Use it as a teaching tool to show your children that everybody makes mistakes and that we can all be problem solvers.

- [Child] iQ Smartparent Teachable Moments are funded in part by the Grable Foundation.

- I think Jen really does a great job in giving the parents and caregivers the tools that they need, right?

And that call to action at the end that it's okay to make mistakes.

And not only is it okay to make them, but you need to, I love the term, the fact that she uses the term "celebrate them" in a way where everybody knows that it's okay and you're gonna come back from that.

So Elaine has a couple more that we wanna talk about as well.

- Sure.

We already touched upon how we wanna have a wide variety of topics.

So we really worked hard to make that happen.

We did one on Books, Dreams and Literacy.

We had one on performing arts.

I think we already talked about the health and wellness.

Social studies had its own category.

We're gonna show you just one of our favorites now from the literacy category.

Books, Dreams and Literacy.

This is actually from a fellow librarian here in the Pittsburgh area.

- Hi, I'm Lisa Dennis, Coordinator of Children's and Teen Collections at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Co-Chair of the Best Books for Babies Committee.

This is my Teachable Moment.

Because learning begins at birth, it's never too early to start sharing books with your baby.

Talking, reading and singing to babies stimulates the speech and language parts of their brain.

Here are a few selections from this year's list.

"The Night is Deep and Wide" is perfect for the very youngest babies because it's easiest for them to see black and white illustrations.

"My Heart Beats" features lots of photos of adorable babies, and that's something that babies love to look at.

"City Baby" shows a mother and child taking a walk through the city and finding a lot of fun a along the way.

You can check out the link here for the 2022 Best Books for Babies List.

See you at the Library.

- [Child] iQ Smartparent Teachable Moments are funded in part by the Grable Foundation.

- So this one just seems so obvious.

And you know, she talked about literacy really starting at birth.

And we actually encourage parents to read to their child while in womb.

And we have story times here at the library that start as early as infant.

But it's really important to keep sharing books throughout a child's, you know, throughout their childhood.

And even once they're reading on their own, I still encourage families to read together.

The books, and it feels like I'm stating the obvious here, but books really are the perfect opportunity to expand upon what your child is already curious in, right?

Because we have such a wide collection, and all libraries do on different topics.

So if your child is showing an interest in a bug that they saw in the backyard, you can expand upon that through books.

If your child is interested in science, we have all different kinds of books on that topic as well.

We have, you know, fiction books and non-fiction books.

There's a regular physical book, but there's also audio books, there's magazines.

Especially during COVID, we were promoting our databases.

But there's so many ways for children to learn through books.

So in being a children's librarian, this video, of course was near and dear to my heart.

But just so you know, we already know that books teach us so much.

Books take us on an adventure.

We should absolutely 100% be using them to expand upon our child's curiosity.

Whatever the topic may be, there's a book to go along with it.

I think one of the other ones that I mentioned was performing arts.

And we're not gonna show a video from this one, but music can be so important too, especially during COVID.

It was nice to kind of just take a break from whatever you were doing and turn on some music, or make some of your homemade music together.

We know that music can be therapeutic in so many ways, but it's also important because it kind of, music can appeal to that different type of learner, right?

While one person might learn visually or through doing things hands-on, we also know that many people learn better through auditory experiences.

So music could be beneficial to those specific types of learners.

But really music in general I think just helps everyone because we already know that it reinforces language skills, it improves memory and your attention span, which was again, especially important during COVID.

And it does help with, you know, reading ability.

There's been study upon study that shows how incorporating music also helps with those literacy skills.

So music was very important.

We also, we do wanna show you, I think, one from this one.

We had a social studies category, if we can find that one.

Social Studies Activities.

And then one that we wanna show you from this one is Dumplings Around the World and how we can engage families in learning about different cultures and about math skills in the kitchen through cooking together.

- Hi, I'm Rachel Sew from OC Pittsburgh, and this is my Teachable Moment.

A tradition is a part of a culture that's handed down from one generation to the next.

It could be a special story, a song or a dance.

In my family making dumplings is a tradition.

A dumpling is a piece of dough wrapped around a filling.

These are going to be made with minced pork, minced chives, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Lots of families in East Asia eat dumplings.

They could be steamed, boiled or pan fried.

Families in Northern China like to eat dumplings to wish for warm winter and wealth because they look like gold ingots, which is ancient money.

Lots of cultures have some form of dumpling.

Depending on where you're from, it could be ravioli, pierogi, or yomari.

Try finding different recipes to try with your family to learn about different cultures and history.

Happy eating.

- [Child] iQ Smartparent Teachable Moments are funded in part by the Grable Foundation.

- So that was another one of my favorite videos because I love to eat and I love to cook.

And I do cook a lot, even though my kids were younger.

But even now that they're older, we oftentimes are sharing recipes or like creating a meal together in the kitchen.

And I think there's so many learning opportunities there.

You know, it can be overwhelming for a parent or caregiver to think about "Gasp, I have to teach my child math," but so many math skills happen naturally in the kitchen, whether it's through measuring and mixing and the actual, you know, process that goes into the cooking, whatever recipe you're making.

But even more important than that is the culture aspect of it, right?

You can expose children to not only trying new foods from different cultures around the world, but at the same time you can be teaching them about that culture and the traditions that they might share.

And just, you know, the different background which helps kids, you know, understand each other better, be more accepting of one another, try new things, embrace new cultures.

And I think that's just so important in today's world as well.

- And some of our favorite video, I mean, it really is hard for us to pick a favorite and often we do say every one is our favorite.

But some of these videos really did just do such a great job at highlighting whatever topic they were talking about.

And again, I think it was because using the community partners really made sure that they were passionate about what they were talking about.

And that showed in their videos, no matter if they had filmed it themselves with their iPhone or whether our production team was there, they were just so passionate about what it was they were talking about, which just made it just so much fun to watch.

The Visual Art Activity ones.

There are several different ones that fall into this category and each of them were amazing.

How to Draw a Rabbit was actually a local cartoonist who was around and available to just show kids how to draw.

The Collage Creation was a great one.

And one of my favorite actual was the photography lesson and about the skill of teaching children how to take photographs and how often they symbolize not only the thing that is happening in the photograph, but sort of capture the time period that is also happening at the same time, which was just a great reminder to parents and caregivers about making sure that kids have access to a camera, whether it's the phone camera or their own camera, but a way for them to capture, again, not only, you know, the person in the photograph, but you know, the newspaper that they're reading or the car that they're driving, just as a way for them to have a, just a moment in time, capture that moment in time and be able to kind of put together that timeline for that.

So that was a great collection I thought.

There also is the STEM Collection, which of course is important to kids.

And there's so many things that you can put in there.

This one talks about finding the stars and being able to code, the beginning steps to coding.

There's tangrams in there.

There was a local teacher who created a paper table and a simple thing that only needed paper.

Again, since some of these videos were created during COVID, there was the time when you needed to be able to find all of these things to do at home with materials that you had at home.

Some of these created post COVID kind of encouraged in the neighborhood or being able to go out and look for resources.

But they all included things to do at home, pretty much for free.

Things that you would have around the house, which we also thought was important.

We wanted families to have access to the materials that were necessary to be able to do the activities at home.

And then the last category that I think we haven't talked about is the Expression and Communication one.

And again, through COVID and then post COVID, I keep going so quickly through them.

- You'd better pick one.

- Expression and Communication.

This one talks a little bit about being able to, this is a sign language.

This is about acting out your feelings.

This one is tells your voice, and you will see that some videos were in more than one category.

Again, it just sort of depended on the topic.

This one is... Oh, this one was actually finding the letters of the alphabet at home.

And then I really did like this one.

And that was Intro to Interviewing Skills where you were talking to your child.

And that one was kind of coming right past, like post COVID, as kids were getting back out into the world and being able to interact again with other people not in their families.

And so I felt like that was an important one and at an important time as well.

So one of the things that we did talk about was that each one did come with a resource sheet.

And I just wanna show you one of those resource sheets.

These are all online, and I think you're still seeing that, but you will see that this one has a resource that links right back to a PBS activity.

This one is actually for Daniel Tiger.

This one also gives you some book ideas.

This one gives you some conversation starters, ways to talk to your child about different activities.

And then this one actually has another PBS resource attached to it.

So they're not all the same.

They sometimes have a activity, sometimes they have the conversation starter, sometimes they have the book list, sometimes they have an activity to try at home, but there usually is some sort of, some sort of activity or resource sheet attached to each one of the videos.

All right.

And I think we're back.

- Wanted to make sure we were sharing the right screen with you there.

Right, so how we engaged families.

If we could go back just one, I guess.

The videos that we were creating were released every two weeks and then promoted on our social media sites.

Families would register and we would mail out a packet of materials to them so that they can watch the video together at home and then also engage in some of the activities.

And then we met virtually with them via Zoom four times per year where we actually did some of the activities together.

And then oftentimes threw in some new ones, new additional ones as well.

But that was a way, again, to connect with one another.

So they had that personal interaction a lot of times.

You know, one of the topics that we did meet virtually for was the health and wellness.

So we sent kids on a scavenger hunt throughout their home and got them up and moving, even though it was right in their home or in their backyard.

It still certainly tied in with the physical movement and the importance of that.

So we did it together virtually, four times per year, but the videos were released every two weeks.

And then throughout that process, along the way there were some lessons and challenges and we wanted to talk briefly about those as well and how we addressed them and how we tackled them.

The first was lack of participation.

How could we get more people on these calls?

How can we mail out more of these activity kits that we worked so hard to create?

How can we get them in the most hands as possible?

So we worked a little bit on how we were gonna promote it and get more people involved.

Topic/partner compatibility was also a slight issue.

We had so many great topics, but it was often hard at times to connect with the right person to make the video for us, right?

Financial literacy was one, but we couldn't just make that connection with a banker or a financial planner or whoever it might be to make the video for us.

So topic/partner compatibility was sometimes an issue.

Again, we just had too many great ideas and couldn't always find the appropriate partner.

We also wanted to have diverse representation, not only a vast array of topics that we covered in each video, but also who was presenting them.

We wanted people from different backgrounds and different neighborhoods and different, you know, people to share different experiences.

So we wanted a diverse representation, for sure.

These Teachable Moment videos were kind of created for anyone from like a young preschooler, all the way up to second or third grade.

So oftentimes when we were thinking of the activities, we wanted to make sure they were age appropriate for, again, your three-year-old and your eight year old, right?

Sometimes what a three-year-old would be interested in might not be the same as what a second or third grader would be interested in.

So we had to think a little bit harder on what could appeal to all ages.

And then again, I think we already talked promotion of the program.

How could we get the word out there and promote it better so that we were reaching as many families as possible.

These were all things that were, kind of came up, but that were addressed and corrected, and now we know better for the future.

Should we try this again?

- So how do you use Teachable Moments in your community?

Well, there's a lot of great ways, and we hope that you will think about ways that you can incorporate them yourselves.

One of the easiest ways is just to use our created content.

Our videos are all available on PBS Learning Media, as are all of our resource sheets.

So you can go ahead and use those however you see fit in your community.

Maybe it's sharing on a social media site, or maybe it's using it to engage with your parents, or maybe it's putting a video in your newsletters.

There are lots of ways where you can use the content that's already created to engage or perhaps spark the learning in your community.

But you might wanna consider your own community partners.

Maybe there are people in your community whose voice you want to elevate and can make an impact in your caregivers and your family's lives.

So consider filming your own videos.

Like we said, you can do it as simply as a one minute video filmed on an iPhone.

You don't need a lot of production value.

You can if you have a, if you have somebody who can do that, but it's not necessary.

It's really about the passion and the content and the person that you are asking to be the voice in the video, really, because that's what the caregivers need.

They just need sort of that spark or that topic to consider.

You can also ask others for ideas.

You might want to partner with a local organization like your public library or possibly your own local PBS station.

So look for partners in the ways to film, but not only to be the voices in the video, but a group to actually work with.

And don't forget to promote other organizations that are in your community because they probably have the ideas that the caregivers need.

And again, that passion comes through.

So if they are talking about something that they're super interested in, I think you'll find that your caregivers are also interested in those topics.

So we hope that you can see the benefit of using these Teachable Moments.

We hope that they will inspire curiosity in your own community and we hope that you will use this model to reach out and reach out to caregivers in your local communities.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Elaine or I, and if you make any Teachable Moments, please let us know because we'd love to see them and perhaps promote them ourselves.

- Thanks for joining us.

[no audio] [no audio]