Katie Couric hosts 'When Families Grieve' a Sesame Street primetime special

For a child, the death of a parent is perhaps one of life's most difficult passages to navigate, not only for themselves but for their entire family. On Wednesday evening, April 14, 2010, PBS and the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street presents an hour-long special, When Families Grieve, hosted by Katie Couric and Kevin Clash as "Elmo" at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT.

Presented in high definition, When Families Grieve handles this daunting topic in an extremely sensitive and compassionate manner by including families’ personal stories about how they have coped with the loss of a parent and spouse. The program also utilizes the Sesame Street Muppets to aid in the communication between adults and children.

The show offers many insights and much hope by providing effective healing strategies that are child appropriate to help children as well as the surviving parent honor their grief and move ahead with their lives.

When Families Grieve is a continuation of Sesame Workshop’s award-winning Talk, Listen, Connect initiative, and because grieving is a family experience, over one million free outreach multimedia resource support kits will be available in English and Spanish after the program’s airing beginning April 15 at this link.

Military families and the general public can access either of the two customized versions of the When Families Grieve outreach kits - one designed to support the specific needs of military families and the other designed for the general public.

According to Sesame Workshop the free kits contain the following:

"A DVD featuring the Sesame Street Muppets and documentary footage of families who have experienced the death of a parent due to a variety of situations including illness, suicide, accidents, and other sudden or natural causes."

Print materials include:

"A guide for parents and caregivers providing tips, strategies, and activities to help comfort and reassure children through difficult times; a children’s storybook designed to comfort children as they cope with the death of a parent; and a facilitator’s guide with strategies for using the project’s components, as well as tips and activities to give to families with children coping with grief."

From statistics supplied by Sesame Workshop, it is “estimated 2.5% of children under age 18 have experienced the death of a parent (approximately 2.5 million children) and on March 10, 2010 TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) estimated that the 5,398 U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan had left 3,779 children without a parent, while 2,669 spouses had been widowed.”

Couric (herself a widow), known to millions over the years from co-hosting duties on NBC Television’s Today Show and her present day anchor role for the CBS Evening News lost her own husband, Jay Monahan to cancer in 1998 when her two daughters were just six and two years old.

In a statement to the press Couric said, "Death and loss are a part of life, but they are very difficult for adults to discuss, much less children. I'm honored that Sesame Street, with its long history of tackling difficult issues with sensitivity, caring and warmth asked me to be a part of this important project. I hope that it will provide families with the tools to help them cope, begin the healing process, and ultimately adjust to their 'new normal' in the healthiest way possible."

The video below is a preview of this very important program, Sesame Street: When Families Grieve, please share it with those who are in need and those you hold dear. I thank you.

PBS KIDS Reading Rainbow turns its last page

After 26 years of giving children reasons to read and opening up the possibilities that the love of literacy provides, PBS KIDS Reading Rainbow turned its last page Friday, August 28, 2009 when the powers-to-be gave the popular television show walking papers.

Over the years, Reading Rainbow was hosted by the genial yet kid-energizing Hollywood star, LeVar Burton, and even with the show garnering two dozen Emmy wins, a Peabody Award, TV Critics Award and NAACP Image Awards those factors did not prevent the program from being shuttered.

As an educational, as well entertaining children’s show, ranked only after Sesame Street and Mister Rogers Neighborhood in longevity, this demise comes as a total surprise.

What caused it? Apparently, it was twofold. Budgeting constraints being one cause (no surprise in this economy) but the other reason, which marked the show for the hit list was an initiative started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration. This initiative placed emphasis on providing children with the basic mechanics for reading, such as phonics and spelling, a niche which the current PBS KIDS program Super Why! fills quite nicely.

In an interview done by Ben Calhoun on National Public Radio’s (NPR) Morning edition, Linda Simensky, vice president for children's programming at PBS explained that when Reading Rainbow was first developed in the early 1980’s everyone was trying to figure out "How do we get kids to read books?"

Well, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Department of Education, and PBS have indeed provided the tools to help children learn to read with programs such as Super Why! but mechanics alone will not make lifelong readers. Once grasped, the tools for reading are marvelous to have but reinforcement is necessary.

Exposing young readers to the vast world of literary titles, as Reading Rainbow did during the last quarter century, opened children to the love of books, with the unlimited possibilities they provided, which (to paraphrase the show’s opening song) enabled them to be anywhere, and to let them be anything - that’s what’s in a book, just take a look.

Reading Rainbow will be missed.