Janet DeGeorge: Accessibility is always worth the wait, right? I hope you all had a wonderful day of learning, interacting with your peers. I went to some wonderful sessions myself. My name is Janet DeGeorge. I'm with Hands and Voices in the FL3 center, and we're pleased to be a partner with the... Sorry, here we go with the captions. Okay. Oh, okay. Yes. Thank you. To be a partner with this conference. I don't know. For those of you who were here last year, if you remember, we tried to cut things up a little bit. Remember one of the sessions with all the beach balls? Remember? Okay, there's not going to be any beach balls. Apparently, there are some complaints that people didn't like my volleyball spikes from the stage. Sorry about that. If I did have some props today, it would include maybe some blue sneakers and a cardigan. I'm so excited to be able to introduce our plenary presenter for this afternoon, presenters for this afternoon. Before I do, I have just a couple of announcements. We want to just thank again all the sponsors and exhibitors who made this conference possible. We're so grateful for all your generosity to make this conference happen. Just a reminder, if you're a presenter, to please remember to go to the presenter ready room in room 313. It opens at 7:15 tomorrow, so your last minute people get that done. Don't forget to vote for the People's Choice poster and hope you've had a chance to do your learning through that as well. I'm so thrilled to be able to introduce today's plenary speakers. The presentation title is Wonder with Us, Finding Inspiration and Guidance in the work of Mr. Rogers. I read the book on the way here on the airplane. There'll be books for sale at the end. But it's just a fantastic, really wonderful experience and I'm so excited to hear from the authors today. Greg Baer is the author and children's advocate whose worked to ignite children's curiosity, encourage creativity, and foster belonging in schools, libraries, museums and beyond has been celebrated literally around the world. Ryan Midzeski is a father, a former teacher, and an award-winning science and education journalist whose stories stem everything from schools, to space travel, to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Won't you help me welcome to our any neighborhood Ryan and Greg. Greg Baer: Good afternoon everyone. Ryan and I have the pleasure of traveling around this country and today we're in our hometown. You have come to our hometown where, yes, it is typically sunny and 70 degrees in the second week in March. We are so glad that you're here with us and this is a little bit how we feel today. When we are in a room with such incredibly caring adults, it means the world to us. It lifts us all up. What you do for so many young people and their families, we can't say thank you enough. So we feel incredible joy to be amongst you in this room today. We also feel that way because we get to talk about this guy, Pittsburgh's favorite ever neighbor. How many of you grew up watching Mr. Rogers' neighborhood? Oh, there's a lot of us in this room. All right, so we want to start today by testing your knowledge. There are a lot of people that just raise their hands. So let's see how much you actually know about Mr. Rogers. So we have three questions I'm going to select... Who was someone that just raised their hand, who just raised their hand? You were volun-told. Okay, you are contestant number one. Okay, Ryan, can we see the first question about Mr. Rogers? Ryan Midzeski: Question number one, Fred Rogers was famous for wearing cardigans. What color cardigan did he wear most often? What is your name? Patty: Patty. Greg Baer: Patty. Patty, is it A, B, C, or D? Patty: I'm going to go A. Greg Baer: You're going to go with A. Why don't you try again? Patty: C. Greg Baer: Okay, I'm going show some C. Let's try a third time. Patty: B? Greg Baer: Ryan, she says B. Ryan Midzeski: Of course, it's B. Greg Baer: Can you get a my other car of trolley bumper sticker? All right, thank you, everyone. Who wants to be contestant number two? You were volun-told again, would you like to play? Betty: Sure. Greg Baer: Okay, Ryan, can we have question number two? Ryan Midzeski: Question number two. Fred Rogers went to Rollins College in Florida. Greg Baer: Any Floridians here? Ryan Midzeski: What was his undergraduate major? Greg Baer: The answer is D. Is that right, Ryan? Ryan Midzeski: That's correct. Greg Baer: What is your name? Betty: Betty. Greg Baer: Betty. Congratulations. Betty, did you see how Betty was on it? All right, let's go to this side of the room. Who is a Mr. Rogers aficionado? Everyone's being volun-told. Is this a typical? All right, Ryan, we have a question. What's your name? Jamie: Jamie. Greg Baer: Jamie's going to take questions number three. Ryan Midzeski: All right, Jamie, question number three. Fred Rogers wasn't the only famous person to graduate from Greater Detroit High School, which is only about 40 miles from where we're sitting right now. Who else did Fred Rogers go to high school with? Greg Baer: She guesses [inaudible 00:06:01]? Is that the correct answer? Ryan Midzeski: That is correct. Greg Baer: All right. Patty, did you see how this game is played? Welcome to the neighborhood, everyone. Ryan Midzeski: So seven of you know Fred really, really well. Some of you get free chances to know Fred. Some of you might be learning about Fred today for the very first time. Or maybe Fred is someone from your childhood who you haven't thought about for a couple of years. Fred has come roaring back into our culture in so many different ways. How many of you saw Morgan Neville's amazing documentary, Won't You be my Neighbor? About 80 minutes of the best hot documentary you'll ever seen in your life. The film, starring Tom Hanks. How many of you saw that? So there's a story that actually involved the hotel right across the street. Many of you are staying at the West End. Tom Hanks was here filming that movie and he was in the elevator. Just a random Pittsburgher walks in the elevator and there's Tom Hanks. Instead of saying, "Oh, Mr. Hanks, I'm such a big fan." This Pittsburgher goes, "Hey, I hear you're here playing Mr. Rogers. Well, we take him really seriously around here. So you better not screw it up." This is Mr. Rogers real life neighborhood. If you're familiar with Fred, we want you to take just a moment to think about the experience of watching Mr. Rogers or maybe Daniel Tiger, for those of you who have small children. Just take one minute, one moment to think about what's the experience of watching Mr. Rogers on television like. What's one word or one phrase that comes to mind when you think of Fred? You can just shout it out or something. Crowd: Special. Neighbor. Ryan Midzeski: Absolutely special, safe, friend, kindness, neighbor. When we remember Fred, we almost always remember him for the way he made us feel, right? He made us feel accepted, he made us feel safe. You might also remember Fred's favorite number, which was 143. That was Fred's sort of secret code for I love You because there's one letter in I, four letters in love, and three letters in you. Fred and his television program made millions of kids feel loved. Greg and I are two of them. So my name is Ryan Midzeski. I am a former teacher. I'm now a writer. Also, the father of two young children, one of whom is six months old and decided to get out at 2:30 last night. So If I collapse on stage in the middle of this, Greg's going to carry us home. Greg Baer: I'm Greg. I'm a girl dad of two amazing female teenage women, and they are amazing, and executive director of the Grable Foundation and founder of something called Remake learning. We'll come back to that later. It was just a few years ago, after I don't know how many years of research,, and drafts on the cutting room floor that [inaudible 00:08:56] published our book, When You Wondered, You're Learning. It's our book about how and why Mr. Rogers' work matters more than ever before, and how you and I might take from Fred's legacy and apply it in the very settings where we're caring for families, our home families, and the kids and families in our care. Today we want you to rethink what you think you know about Fred. Now to be sure, hold close to those things that you just shouted out, the neighborliness, the kindness, how Fred makes us feels safe, and special, and accepted. All of us need, however, to rethink Fred and to understand Fred differently. Fred as the innovator, Fred as the scientist, Fred as an educator, a master educator of the 20th century who did something extraordinary. So many of you raised your hands when we said, "How many of you grew up with Mr. Rogers?" So today, this afternoon we want to find something new in something and in someone so very familiar. So let's wonder together. You all want to go ahead and wonder about Mr. Rogers and how and why he still matters? Before we do, let's do three things, three things that we need to know about Fred. The first thing is this. We know more, more than we ever have, about the learning sciences, about how you, and I, and kids in our lives learn. We know more from neurosciences and biology and all sorts of fields, and we know the very building blocks that are important for the nurture and growth of every single kid. Ryan Midzeski: Second thing to know is that the world is changing. It's changing fast, it's changing technologically. Accessibility is changing, adaptability is changing. Those of you who work with young children, you are at the forefront of now getting this. As the world changes, so too do the things we need our kids to know and be able to do in order to thrive in the world. We need to rethink what are the skills and dispositions they need in a fast-changing society. How might we rethink the experiences that we offer kids that equips them with the tools, the resources, and the relationships that we know every single kid needs in order to thrive? Tough questions, a big task. But the good news is, as you just heard from Greg, we know what works. We have decades of research from the learning sciences telling us, pointing us forward in schools, libraries, doctors' offices, living rooms, you name it. The good news is those plans, those blueprints come from someone who's really familiar. Greg Baer: That's right. There's a guy named Fred who left us the blueprints. Of course, when we say Fred, we're talking about this guy, this guy who so many of us know, and love, and whose time and neighborhood we spent in our mornings with our families, with siblings, with so many others. It was Joanne Rogers, Mrs. Rogers, who wrote in the foreword to our book that there's a blueprint to how Fred went about his work. That blueprint is accessible to me and you today in all of the things that we might do to support kids in our care. Ryan Midzeski: So what is it that we know about how kids learn, grow, and develop? We actually know a lot. If you talk to some of the top learning scientists, many of whom are working right here in Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon, if you talk to classroom teachers who've been doing this, if you talk to many of the people in this room who know better than anyone how great learning happens, something interesting starts to happen. After a while, you read enough research papers and they start to read scripts from Mr. neighborhood. They're asking questions like, how do we make sure kids feel safe? How do we make sure that they belong to a community that cares about them? How do we make sure that every kid feels, as Fred used to say, that they are loved and capable of loving? There are all sorts of examples of why Fred's work still matters, even just one. It comes back to a song that Fred wrote that many of you might know. It's called It's You I Like. Song: It's you I like. It's not the things you wear. It's not the way you do your hair. But it's you I like. The way you are right now, Way down deep inside you. Not the things that hide you. Not your toys. They're just beside you. But it's you I like. Ryan Midzeski: Some of you might remember this one. In fact, I can tell a lot of you do, because whenever we hear Fred's voice, the whole room just goes... But you can see up here, these mirrors talk about the importance of self-acceptance. It's about somebody telling you that they like you for who you are, not for what you look like, or for what your clothes are, for where you come from. They like you for you. We know from modern learning science now just how much just matters. In fact, we know from modern learning science that this sense of feeling liked unconditionally has majorly quantifiable impacts on how kids learn, grow, and value. You can see these research papers were written in 2021, 2025. Fred wrote Did You Know in 1979. We could spend all afternoon, in fact, we're going to spend the next three or four hours talking about the ways in which... I'm just kidding. I know we're keeping you all for the hour. We can spend all this time talking about the ways in which learning science is just now catching up to Mr. Rogers. But if I'm going to leave you with one big idea today, it's this. This neighborhood that so many of us know, and love, and remember can be more than a pleasant memory in the minds of us adults. It's also a resource, it's a blueprint. It's something that if we look to it as adults, can help the way forward for kids and learning, no matter where they are, no matter who it is that we're serving. So how might we make, wherever it is that we work, or whoever it is that we work with, how might we bring a little bit more of the neighborhood into that space? Which is just another way of saying how might we make our learning spaces more joyful and more wondrous? How do we bring in a greater sense of belonging? That's what we're going to talk about today. How might we do what Mr. Rogers taught best, be human. That's what we're going to talk about. But before we get into it, we want to be clear about one thing. You're in Pittsburgh, so if you walk around, you leave here, you talk to anybody on the street, the chances are really, really high that you'll meet somebody who actually knew Mr. Rogers. The first question people asked when they meet someone who knew Fred was, "Was he really like that?" The answer was yes. Fred was just as kind, and considerate, and wonderful in person as he was on television. But he wasn't the same. It's different from saying he was perfect. Fred Rogers, like everybody else, sometimes got angry, sometimes he made mistakes. Sometimes Fred wondered whether what he was doing really mattered, whether Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was really going to make a difference at all. Despite all that, Fred committed himself to being a person children needed him to be every day of his life. So the Fred we saw on screen was not a saint, but a practice. It was a result of Fred's daily choices and his careful methods. Without a doubt, the greatest honor of this whole multi-year project is having that forward from Mrs. Rogers, who unfortunately passed away just a few weeks before the book came out. It's the last thing she wrote before she died. In that forward, Joanne wrote, "No one worked harder at being Fred Rogers than Fred Rogers himself." So with that, let's get into a couple of reminders of who Fred was and who he was working so hard to become. Greg Baer: As we do so, I'm just curious, did anyone in the room ever meet Mr. Rogers? So we're going to have to talk to you then. Anyone ever meet Joanne? Two extraordinary human beings who were exactly the human beings that we needed them to be. If we're going to ask [inaudible 00:17:18], and think about how the neighborhood matters in our homes, in our offices, in the places where you're providing intervention services, or conducting research, or doing the care work that you need to do, there are some things we're going to need to remind ourselves about Fred. The first one is this, that he is more than a nice guy in a beautiful, green, cardigan hat. Now many of you have seen Morgan Neville's amazing documentary. Maybe you've read biographies. We know a lot about Fred. We're not going to go too deeply into Fred's background, but there are a couple of things that we need to understand about Fred in the neighborhood if we're going to understand these blueprints. The first thing is this. As a young Fred Rogers, watching television, one of the first things he ever saw was people pouring pies in each other's faces. He hated seeing the technology being used in that way to demean other human beings. It was a memory that stuck with him because as he moved forward in his life, at this point, Fred's just Fred the student, he's decades away from creating the neighborhood. He ends up studying here in Pittsburgh, at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. This is after his time at Dartmouth and at Collins. It's at the seminary that he articulates that he wants to use this technology of television, which he knows is so attractive to kids, and make that attractive technology good. He wants to minister to children, as he said. As his teachers there at the seminary who says, "Well Fred, if you're going to do that, you better learn something about child development theory and practice." This is where Fred's story gets so interesting for you and me as adults looking back to Fred's work, because Fred ended up in a place called the Arsenal Family and Children's Center, still operating in the east end of Pittsburgh today. That center was created by Dr. Benjamin Spock and a woman by the name of Margaret McFarland. So imagine Dr. Spock, and Erik Erickson, and Brazelton, and other learning scientists working alongside this professor, Margaret McFarland at the University of Pittsburgh. Fred is learning from all of these Mount Rushmore-worthy scientists of the 20th century. He takes all of that science and then he applies that in the most seamless ways possible years ahead in lyrics, and in puppetry, a wardrobe, in a physical set itself. You see, Fred Rogers was a learning scientist and he was a learning scientist who was decades, decades ahead of his time. Ryan Midzeski: Second thing we got to know is that Fred taught what he called the tools for learning. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood is rightly remembered as an educational television program. But for those of you who watched it, you probably know that we didn't spend a whole lot of time on things like fractions or spelling, things we typically think of when we think of learning in schools. Instead, Fred focused on another aspect of learning. We're going to play you a short video that explains what that aspect was. Clips: Remember? Welcome again to this neighborhood. I'd like to show you something. Know what this is? Well, maybe if I press this button. This is a cassette player with a little cassette in there. There's nothing written on it, so we'll just have to play it to see what it is. Do you ever imagine? Are they scary things? Do you ever imagine, The things you'd like to have? Did ever see a cat's eyes in the dark, And wonder what they were? Did you ever pretend [inaudible 00:21:07], You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind. It's good to be curious about many things. You can think about things and make believe, All you have to do is think and [inaudible 00:21:31]. Ryan Midzeski: So Fred focused on curiosity. He focused on creativity. He focused on all these things that help grow the garden of the mind, as you just saw. These were Fred's tools for learning. He said, "I'd rather give children the tools for learning. If we give them the tools, they'll want to learn the facts, and more importantly, they'll use the facts to build and not destroy." Fred knew, just as every great educator knows, just as all of you know, that academic content has to be paired with a nurturing of what's best in us. You knew that one without the other is insufficient. You need both in order to raise complete human beings. Here again, learning science is proving Fred right. In fact, Fred's tools for learning might be more important now than they were when Fred was still with us. One of our favorite examples comes from a little California company. What's it called, Greg? Greg Baer: It's called the Google. Ryan Midzeski: You guys know the Google? All right. So a couple of years ago, Google had this really interesting promotional structure. Basically, if you wanted to get ahead at Google, you had to do one thing. You just had to be a really good engineer, a really good coder. Because Google's philosophy was, "Look, we're going to put the best coders in charge. The people who know the most stuff, those are the people who should be calling the shots." Which sort of makes sense on the surface. But after a while, Google started to wonder, "Are we really putting the right people in positions of leadership?" So they launched something that they called internal to the company, Project Oxygen. Through Project Oxygen, they analyzed tens of thousands of data points, things like exit interviews, and performance evaluations, all sorts of surveys. What they found was that, yes, actually being a good coder really mattered. If you want to get ahead of this company, you have to be a good engineer. But among the things that mattered the most, that content expertise ranked almost last. The other more important skills were things like can you be a good team player? You look out for your colleagues, show concern for their well-being? Can you work on, can you lead a diverse team? The people who really thrived at Google were people with all these qualities that Fred Rogers taught so well, these very human qualities that can't be replaced by machines. You all know this, when we help kids and young people develop these qualities, not only are we giving them the tools to succeed in their professional lives, whether they work at Google or any place else. We're giving them the tools to discover themselves, to figure out what it is that moves them, what bothers them, what intrigues them, and most importantly, what brings them joy. Fred's tools for learning have been shown to be up to 10 times more predictive of children's long-term success than test scores. They cost almost nothing to develop, and they hinge on the very things that we think make life worth living, self-acceptance, close and loving relationships, and a deep regard for our neighbors. So in our book, what we try to do is unpack these tools, one per chapter, showing you how Fred nurtured it in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, what the science says about why these tools matter. Then we try to give you a bunch of real-life examples, curated from classrooms, libraries, museums, doctors' offices, living rooms across the country of people doing Fred-like things in the digital age. We're going to do a little bit of that now. Let's talk a little bit about what Fred did. Greg Baer: So what did Fred do? Fred did thousands of little things that added up to something so brilliant. We can share thousands of them today, we'll share just a few. The first one is this, Fred combined familiarity with mystery. But we want you to think about the kids in your care as we go through each of these seemingly simple, ordinary examples that each in their own way is extraordinary. How many of you remember going to a Crayon factory with Mr. Rogers? It's one of the favorite episodes of any audience. What we remember now as adults is being in that factory, at least in Pennsylvania, right? Seeing the machines produce all of these incredible crayons. Fred knew that if we went right off to that place of mystery, to that Crayon factory, that we kids would've been completely confused, scared, maybe even misunderstanding what's going on. So to go back as an adult and look at what Fred did in that program is extraordinary. Because Fred starts right there in that living room. Can you picture it right now? He gets out wooden box, he opens it and he pulls out a set of crayons. You could probably smell those crayons right now. You can see those colors right now. Fred takes out those crayons, and on the easel right behind him, just starts to draw. Fred's starting in a familiar place for you and me, and then took us off to a place of mystery. Just how great learning happens. Ryan Midzeski: He did that because he understood that it's hard for kids to be curious about things that they're not familiar with. This goes for adults too. In fact, we want to try a little experiment. I'm going to give you all a name and I want you to tell me on a scale of one to five, how curious you get when you hear this name. All right? How excited do you get about learning more? One being, Ryan and Gregg, let's wrap this up. If that's how you feel, that's totally okay. Five being wow. I'm going to stop and buy four or five copies of your book on the way out. All right, the name. You guys ready? The name is Angus. All right, we hear the name Angus, where are you with curiosity? Just hold up your numbers. One through five. See a lot of ones, some twos. Greg Baer: Lots of ones, some twos. Ryan Midzeski: There's always somebody holds up to zero. Not even an option that I gave. I appreciate your honesty. All right, so we don't know much about Angus. Hard to be curious about people we don't know or people we're not familiar with. All right, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Angus. Because Angus was a soccer mascot and in 2002 Angus was elected mayor of a small town in England. Where are you with curiosity? One to five. Hold up your numbers again. Okay, I'm doing a little bit better. I got some threes. I've got some fives already. All right. Hold on a second. For you hold-outs, I'm going to give you just one more piece of information about Angus. Because Angus served the term as mayor. This is Angus, by the way. Then Angus was re-elected two more times. Where are we with curiosity now? One through five. I see fives almost across the board. So if I were your teacher, I could use that sense of wonder to open up a discussion about voting, for elections, really whatever I want. That's why Fred, whenever he introduced us to something new, he always started with what was familiar. Before he took us to school for the first time, he talked about, "You know, school is very much like a home. You'll see a kitchen, you'll see a bathroom, you'll see tables and chairs." Fred did this before he took us to doctors' offices, before he tried us, showed us new technology like hearing aids, even before we did something as simple as getting a haircut. Fred would make sure kids felt grounded in something that was familiar before we went off into the sense of newness, into this place of mystery. We see educators doing this in all sorts of interesting ways. Just down the road from where we're sitting there's a school district called Fox Chapel area, and they start kindergarten, their next incoming class comes in next September. They're starting to get those kids ready now. They have days where kids just come and they look at a school bus. They can just stand there with their parents and caregivers and they can just look at the bus. So it becomes this thing that isn't so scary. Then the next week they can get on the bus, again with their parents and caregivers. Then eventually, once they feel familiar with all that, they can go to their school, they can meet their teachers, they can see in what room they're going to go to. So that by the time they show up in September, all of this is familiar already. Teachers can begin on day one taking them off to this place of mystery, just like Fred Rogers did. Greg Baer: So what's another thing that Fred did? Again, think of the kids in your care. Fred taught us the importance of indulging our own creativity as they carry adults in kids' lives. You can picture Fred right now, maybe he's sitting there in the kitchen, he's at the table and he's playing with Popsicle sticks, or he's cutting with construction paper, or gluing felt together, right? He was making it clear that no matter what he was doing at any one moment, it was bringing him joy. Ryan Midzeski: It wasn't just Fred. I mean, do you all remember the people we got to meet in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? There were people like Yo-Yo Ma, people like Julia Child. We have Eric Carle here. There's actually an actor named Tim Scanlon as well from the National Theater from the Deaf. Fred was always bringing people for us to meet in the neighborhood. People who would love whatever it is that they love, whether it was acting, or cooking, or music. They would love it right in front of us as an audience. It wasn't just the guest stars either. How many of you remember Mayor Maggie? Mayor of Westwood and Maggie Stewart still lives here in Pittsburgh. Her hobby or the thing that she loved most, she would come by and she teach ASL. You could see the joy in not only Maggie Stewart's face, but also in Mr. Rogers' face as he was learning from her. Speaking of Pittsburgh- Greg Baer: Yeah, so let me share with you something that brings me joy. It's a skateboard. Anyone skateboard here when you were younger? Maybe you still skateboard today. I see a few hand nods. So let me take you back to the first days of the pandemic. A place none of us wants to go, I guess, right? Right? We're going to sit out for two weeks. We're going to be good. So during the first two weeks of the pandemic, I went into my garage and it was already filled with boxes that already looked like an episode of the TV show Hoarders. This is before the volumes of Amazon boxes arrived during the course of the pandemic. I found in my garage, my old winter skateboard, and I thought, why not skateboarding right now? Because what rational half century man wouldn't think that? So I get on my skateboard, and those of you who are here in Pittsburgh for the first time, ideally you've noticed, it is not flat. So I jump on my skateboard and I just start going down my driveway into the street, which itself is a hill. You can imagine what I felt. Instant terror, right? What am I doing? Why am I on the skateboard? It's also true that I felt absolute joy because I spent countless summer nights enjoying and skateboarding. I'm pleased to tell you that I jumped and got down to the bottom of my neighborhood, and I hadn't injured myself in any way. I was feeling pretty good, right? I feel pretty good about this. What I didn't notice is that my two girls and six of their friends were falling behind me because they're probably like, "What is Mr. Barrett doing? Well, I don't even know." They probably hadn't even seen a skateboard before. Do you know that today there are still eight young teenage women in my neighborhood who every now and again pull out their skateboards? Now, I'm not a scientist. I'm not going to draw the correlation from a to B. But I can tell you in that moment, unbeknownst to me, I was the best teacher in the world, loving what I was doing it, and loving it right in front of others. Exactly how Fred Rogers described the best teachers amongst us. Ryan Midzeski: So before we move on, we're curious about Google. What is the thing that when you do it, it makes you feel most alive? What makes you feel most yourself? What is your skateboard, so to speak? Now, maybe it's been a really long time since you've done this thing, or maybe it's something you did last weekend. Whatever it is, we want you to take just a moment to think to yourself about what is that thing that you love to do more than anything else world. Okay, does everybody have some idea? We want you to take the next 30 seconds, turn to the person next to you and let them know what that thing is that gives you that good feeling. [inaudible 00:33:52]. Greg Baer: [inaudible 00:34:38] has things they want to talk about. I've come back, I'm a bad venture, so I appreciate all of you here in the back of the room. Is someone willing to share your skateboard? That thing that you do, or play with, or whatever it might be the great to you, that great feeling? Anyone willing to share? Crowd: Tap dance. Greg Baer: What is that? Crowd: Tap dance. Greg Baer: Tap dance? Who said tap dance? You said tap dance? What is [inaudible 00:35:05]? What do you do professionally? You're a consultant. Do the folks whom you serve know that you love to tap dance? Crowd: Some might. Greg Baer: Some might. Imagine the kids, and the families, and others, the connection they would feel if they have that moment of knowing your own joy, and your joy is tap dancing. It might be axe throwing. It could be walking on the beach, it could be running. Does anyone else want to share one other thing that makes you feel alive? Oh, another volun-told example. What is your example? Crowd: Horseback riding. Greg Baer: Horseback riding. These are the things that are our skateboards in our lives. Ryan Midzeski: Whatever it is that you love to do, whether it's horseback riding or tap dancing, Fred was reinforcing again and again the importance of surrounding kids with adults who truly love something and who aren't afraid to love that thing in front of you. So the question for us becomes how do we create more opportunities for us, the adults, to light ourselves up like that in front of our young people? Greg, you want to tell me about this week? Greg Baer: Just two simple examples that come from the field of education. Here's a high school teacher who teaches really dry subject matter around political, economic, social traditions of the 18th and 19th century. Here's a teacher who used to work in museums for nearly 15 years. So she brings her love of museums and exhibitry to help bring subject matter and ideas to life in an incredible way through a cabinet of curiosities, of museum exhibit curiosities for her students. Or here's another example of a teacher who absolutely loves amusement parks and video games. Someone who received permission from his school to recreate his classroom to look exactly like this. Imagine a teacher who's teaching 4th graders about science or other subject matter in a space that brings him joy, environment drives behavior. Ryan Midzeski: Two more things that Fred did. One of the things is that he just wondered about a lot. You pick almost any scene from almost 900 episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and you'll find him talking about how many questions he has about the world or bringing us things that interest him and make him curious. Fred was always wondering about other people, other languages, about plants and animals. He was always telling us how much he wants to know about the world. That, like everything else Fred did on television, was deliberate. "It's what you bring to the children every day," he says, "That encourages and inspires children to ask questions and be imaginative." When we respond thoughtfully to children's questions, we're encouraging their curiosity. Even when we don't know the answer to those questions, we're at least letting kids know that it's good to wonder and ask. By the way, Fred was right about this. If any of you have ever written a letter to Mr. Rogers, many of you might have when you were young, you could probably go find it in the Fred Rogers' Archive [inaudible 00:38:20], because they kept everything. You go to this archive and there boxes, and boxes, and boxes, 15 years worth of correspondence of kids and their parents writing to Mr. Rogers with questions. They're asking questions like, "Mr. Rogers that have never rain in your neighborhood?" Some really wonderful questions that Fred would then turn around and talk about in the neighborhood. In a very real sense, the neighborhood was a conversation. It was a conversation that began and continued with questions and wondering allowed. Greg Baer: [inaudible 00:38:53] was a master educator and worked with Fred on the first day of production in 1968 and continues to this day to work with the Fred Rogers Institute shared with this example of an ask it basket. She walked into a classroom and saw this enormously sized wicker basket and thought, "That's taking up a lot of real estate. What on earth is this thing doing here?" But she'd gone to the space to see a master educator at work. So she goes to the back of the classroom and she sits down. What does she witness? A master educator, right? Because educators, exactly as advertised. What Helen noticed about this teacher is that these kids are asking all sorts of questions. Now, sometimes these questions were right on point with the pedagogical practice in that moment. So it made sense in that moment for the teacher to answer it. But more often than not, these kids were asking questions right out from over the left field ball. They had nothing to do with anything. Kids bring their full complicated selves to every situation. So this teacher took the time to notice what was asked, to acknowledge the question, to physically write it on a piece of paper, and to walk over to the basket and say, "Later together we're going to wonder about the answer or answers to your questions." Imagine that moment, how those kids feel safe, accepted, and feel like they belong. You and I can create ask it baskets in our kitchens. You can have it there by your side as you're providing intervention support, maybe be sitting in someone's living room. You can have it in your doctor's office. Kids bringing their full complicated selves as do other adults. If kids know that it's safe and okay to ask questions, they will connect to you all more. Like these kids do in an early head start classroom, a modern version of an ask it basket, where kids are equipped with digital cameras and use SMS technology to send a text message off to a parent such that a parent at the end of the day picking up that child doesn't say, "What did you do today?" Right? Because then a three, or four year, or even eight, or 12 year old's going to say, "Well, I did this and this and this and this," right? No, you as an adult can say, "I noticed that you were looking at the blue fish. Why the blue fish? What intrigued you about that? What bothered you about it? What did it make you think about?" Another thing that Fred did among the many thousands of things that he did is that he modeled psychological safety. He let us know that we belonged, that we were safe, and that it was okay to make all sorts of mistakes. Fred, in fact, often kept mistakes in the tapes of the programs of him, for example, buttoning his cardigan in the wrong way. It was a reminder to us that it's okay to make mistakes. Crowd: It's red. Greg Baer: All right? Yes, it's red. You win. Here's an example in a rural school district that brings [inaudible 00:41:50] into an early living learning setting as kids are getting comfortable learning to read. Imagine the safety that they feel in that space. This brilliant program is called Reading to You. For those of you who know that. Here's the example of folks using [inaudible 00:42:09] and simple time together with adults to open up a space of conversation about all sorts of problems. It could be physical, social, emotional, academic, or otherwise. I want to share with you just one very personal example of this idea of psychological safety. Because you could imagine that Ryan and I, in writing this book and in releasing it to the world have been personally challenged because we, ourselves, are trying to raise kids in our respective homes. A number of years ago, it was during March, it was a Friday night. I'm not somebody who [inaudible 00:42:41] in the weekends. I feel like the luckiest kid in Pittsburgh. I feel blessed in this life what I get to do. I hope most of you are lucky enough to feel that in yourselves. But this was a Friday night that I just needed, and it was during March Madness, right? All I wanted to do was watch five basketball games all at once somehow, and see Cleveland State upset the University of Michigan, or something crazy, right? There I'm sitting on my sofa and my daughter, Catherine, she was laying across sofa. Then in a moment out of the blue, she says this, "Daddy, am I going to be shot?" Now, the lucky among us have never heard that question. There's sadly too many adults in America who have heard that question. Unbeknownst to me, despite my best efforts to keep the news of the day out of my household, my young Catherine had learned that five Asian Americans had been gunned down in Atlanta that week. Catherine's mom is Taiwanese American, so they're mixed race. So she was thinking, "Am I going to suffer the same fate that these Asian Americans experienced in Atlanta?" I froze at that moment. It was a question for me right out of the left field ball. But I knew enough at that moment and the lessons of Fred came home to me that I needed to convey to her that she was safe. That I didn't necessarily have the answers, but that she had her mom, me, and all of the caring adults by her side to help her navigate this life with the questions that she has. Think about the questions that the young people and their families whom you serve have. A third reminder is that Fred reminded that we're worth being proud of. Now, there are all sorts of interesting examples from the learning sciences about this, and I want to share just one that relates directly to those blueprints that Fred left for us. So in the early part of this century, some researchers gave some first-year college students a psychology test, a personality test rather. Then divided this group of first-year students into three groups based on the results of this personality test. Group number one, based on the results of your personality test, all of you, I have good news for you, you're going to have rich, rewarding relationships throughout your life. Your marriage, your partnership, your friendships are absolutely going to flourish. Group number two, right here in the middle, it's not quite like the news for group number one, you'll have relationships, you'll have a partnership, but they might be fade from decade to decade, which I guess, I don't know, seems sort of normal in the passage of human life. Group number three, I have bad news to share with this group here. You're going to be injured, falling downstairs, in car accidents. Life is going to be incredibly rough for you. I hope you have good health insurance. Good luck. Then these researchers gave all of these students an IQ test. Which of these groups of students bombed the IQ test? Is it group number one, group number two, or group number three? How many of you think is group number one? How many of you think it's group number two? How many of you think it's group number three? Most of you just raise your hands. It seems like it should be group number three. I just give you terrible news, right? No, you actually did just as well as group number one did on this IQ test. It was group number two. Why was it group number two? Because I just told you that your relationships were going to fade. In that moment that these 18, and 19, and 20-year-olds heard that their relationships were going to fade, they lost the ability to reason. They lost the ability to think. They lost the ability to do things that they would've done on any other day. We now have the neuroscience available to us to know that the pain that you feel when you feel loss, and isolation, and like you don't belong is the same place in your brain that you feel that pain as the physical pain you feel when you fall down the stairs and get injured. Fred Rogers talked about this. Whether we're a preschooler or a retired person, we human beings need to know that we're worth being proud of. Now, fortunately, these researchers told everyone this was a ruse. This is not your destiny. This is a fake personality test. But it drives home the radical message of Fred Rogers. "I like you just the way you are," Fred said, and he wasn't saying that you're perfect or everything that you do or say is good or even okay. But what he was saying is, I recognize you and your humanity and that you are worth being proud of. Ryan Midzeski: Fred recognized that learning and love are linked. He recognized that they are inextricably linked, and that no matter what we do, no matter what our particular job in life is, Fred said, "All of us are called to be Tikkum Olam," which is the Jewish term for repairers of creation. Fred used to say, "No matter what you do in life, thank you for whatever it is you do to bring joy, and hope, and love, and light, and pardon to the young people in your care. Thank you for whatever it is you do that shows any child I like you just the way you are. Greg Baer: A fourth, final, quick reminder about Fred and his work and how and why it matters so much to us today is that Fred appreciated that learning happens everywhere. It was Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. It wasn't Mr. Rogers' household, it wasn't Mr. Rogers' school. Fred understood that there's a broad learning landscape with all sorts of caring adults from whom we're constantly learning. Fred built a neighborhood, and right here in this city to which you've come, a place that we love to call Kidsburgh, ideally a place that aspires to be one of the best places on planet earth to be a kid and made easier to raise children. We've gone about the work of remaking learning experiences for young people, and our families, and the caring adults just like you in their lives in all of the places they might learn, online, in museums, in libraries, in doctor's offices, wherever that might be. It's brought a tremendous spotlight to the Pittsburgh region globally. But ultimately it's about all of those learning spaces and what you and I do as grown-ups in their lives in the seemingly simple, often mundane moments, because those mundane moments can add up to something entirely brilliant. A journalist once said to Fred Rogers, after producing more than 900 episodes, "What is it, Fred, that you're doing with this?" Fred said, "I'm creating an atmosphere." You and I, in all of the things that we do every single day, we create atmospheres where the young people and the families whom we support are thriving and flourishing or feel like their relationships are fraying and failing and something else is happening. We, as caring adults in these kids' lives, have the opportunity to do what it is that Fred taught us, what it means to be human in this difficult, sometimes complex and chaotic world. We need to remember that all of the time, you and I together with these kids are trying. When we try together, anything is possible. Anything is possible together for limitless potentials and their futures, regardless of what their abilities or circumstances might otherwise tell them. So now it's your turn. How will you and I take Fred forward in the ways that we can? Ryan Midzeski: So you might be thinking, okay, but I could never live up to Fred Rogers and his legacy. I could never live up to the bar that he set. I think that there's one person who, if she were still with us, she'd probably disagree. That's Mrs. Rogers again, because it's the truth of Fred's ministry that she wrote, that every last one of us can be as caring, kind, and influential in children's lives as he was. Every last one of us can do some version of what Fred did. How might we do that? That's the question we keep coming back to. Sometimes we think the best way to answer that question is to think about how other people did it for us. So we're going to close by doing an exercise that Fred Rogers himself used to do when he talked to people like you, people who had young children in their care, people who were willing to stand up and be repairers of creation. So we're just going to recite this exercise to you word for word because we think it sums up everything Fred Rogers was about. We think it sums up all the reasons why Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood still matters so much today. From the time you were very little, you've had people who smiled you into smiling, people who talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into to loving you. Some of them may be here right now, some may be far away. Some may even be in heaven. But wherever they are, if they loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they're right inside yourself. We feel that you deserve some quiet time on this special occasion to devote some thought to them. So let's just take a minute and honor the people who've cared about us all along the way, one silent minute. Greg and I will watch the time. It was around the turn of the millennium that a journalist asked Fred Rogers, "What's the greatest challenge of the 21st century going to be?" You can imagine all the ways Fred might've responded, but this is what Fred said. "Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given." You all are doing the work. You know that Fred was right. It is tough. It is easier to tear things down than it is to build them up, right? It's easier to criticize than it is to create something of value. It's easier to fear our neighbors than it is to love them. But if we want to do more as adults than just raise future workers, if we want to raise more creative, curious, caring kids, if we want to build stronger and more inclusive communities, and a more just and loving world, then making goodness attractive is exactly what we have to do. What we love about that exercise is that whoever it is that you were thinking about during your one silent minute, maybe it was a teacher, or a parent, or a friend, maybe it was even Fred Rogers himself, he or she is proof that making goodness attractive is possible. How are we going to do the same for our kids? That is our charge. The fact that so many of you are here, the fact that so many of you are standing up to do this work, that's worth celebrating, that's something to hope for. So thank you all so much for having us. It's been such a pleasure. [inaudible 00:56:01].