Ready to Face the Future: Preparing Preschoolers for Success in Careers and Life
By Kama Einhorn, M.A.
At a time of rapid social, technological, and environmental change, Sesame Workshop is developing a program to help young children become lifelong learners — confident in themselves and prepared to thrive as they grow.
Children born today will be the first not to know a world without AI. What skills will this generation need? What learning approaches will best nurture those skills? And what is the ideal environment for learning to happen? With Sesame Workshop’s long history of meeting children’s most pressing needs, addressing these questions became a top priority. Now, we’re developing an initiative to leverage the power of public libraries to help children grow into lifelong learners.
A key project of the initiative — generously funded by Britebound, a national nonprofit focused on youth career readiness — will be a multi-year, scalable, library-based program to help children build key skills to serve them in the workplace of the future and throughout their lives. Beyond providing Sesame-quality resources to help children develop confidence as learners, the program will equip the caring adults in their lives with strategies to support them as they learn and grow.
At the outset of any major project, Sesame Workshop convenes advisors to help inform our approach. True to that model, we hosted a roundtable at Sesame’s NYC offices, bringing together leading experts in child and developmental psychology, early childhood education, community engagement, and workforce development to explore the concept of lifelong learning.
Our advisors, each bringing their own research-based perspective, explored five key areas:
- Nurturing Uniquely Human Skills: What are the skills and traits children will need to become lifelong learners and succeed in the workplace?
- Encouraging Positive Mindsets & Beliefs: How can we help preschoolers build confidence and spark motivation?
- Helping Preschoolers Think About the Future: How do young children think beyond the here and now, and what is the benefit of helping them place themselves in future scenarios?
- Considering the Future of Work: What will this next generation need to succeed? What will “career readiness” mean for them?
- Leveraging the Power of Libraries: How can these informal community settings help nurture essential skills and traits? How can we design playful learning environments within libraries?
Taken together, the presentations and discussions created a shared foundation of knowledge that will inform the shape and scope of the program. The day’s learnings left the Sesame Workshop team with a better picture of the kinds of media to create and the most promising ways to bring that media to children in library settings.
With an ultimate goal of children becoming confident lifelong learners, Sesame’s vision is to nurture the uniquely human skills necessary for children to thrive while helping them build a positive sense of themselves, a sense of agency and self-efficacy, and the ability to adapt to — and flourish in — the face of constant change.
ADVISORS (pictured from left to right in the photo above) :
- Tequilla Brownie, EdD, MSW, Chief Executive Officer, The New Teacher Project
- Vanessa Bermudez, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychological Science, Loyola Marymount University
- Andrei Cimpian, PhD, Professor of Psychology, New York University (attended virtually)
- Kathryn Leech, PhD, Associate Professor, School of Education, UNC at Chapel Hill
- Munro Richardson, PhD, Creator, Unconstrainedkids.com; Executive Director, Read Charlotte
- Ryan Rydzewski, Co-author of When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids
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