Local PBS Stations Still Stand by Teachers with Robyn Stringfellow
At both the local and national levels PBS stations are facing serious challenges. Yet, they keep providing some of the most helpful and robust resources for educators. In this conversation local PBS educator Robyn Stringfellow shares how PBS stations support the work of teachers-and will continue to do so in the future!
Links discussed in episode
WTCI TV Chattanooga-the local PBS station we discuss
PBS Learning Media website-specific for Tennessee teachers, may need to change for your location
PBS Supporting Teachers-informational website
Episode Transcript
Robyn Stringfellow 25July
Title: Local PBS Stations Still Stand with Teachers with Robyn Stringfellow
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and education organizations please visit our website at www.oncoursesolutions.net and reach out.
Thank you for joining me as we start the fall semester of episodes for The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast! Today I am sharing a conversation with Robyn Stringfellow the Manager of Educational Content and Services for WTCI TV, my local PBS station. This episode developed a little bit differently than most episodes in that Robyn and I know each other and this episode started as a personal conversation about the recent defunding of public media, which we will discuss shortly. Before coming to public TV, Robyn was an instructional designer and teacher with experience teaching Chinese, English and social studies. We’ll hear about her work at PBS shortly, but we start by finding out how she became a teacher despite her best efforts to avoid the profession.
So, welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast. Robyn.
Robyn Stringfellow: Thank you so much for having me.
Scott Lee: So first off, before we, talk, too much about public media, you were a teacher. What led you to become a teacher in the first place?
Robyn Stringfellow: I grew up in a teacher's household, so my mom is a Montessori teacher, and I swore to myself as I came of age that I would never be a teacher because I watched my mom work so hard and so diligently, and we still did not have much money and she was often very tired.
So, I decided I would study law. And apply to law school because I wanted to have more money and, not work so hard. And, upon entering the law field, I worked with a lot of attorneys who told me, “You're not a lawyer.”
“You don't have what it takes.”
“You're too soft, you're too gentle, you're too compassionate.”
“This job will just eat you alive.”
And at the time, I thought, “well, that's not very nice.”
But anyways, my, my work and my studies led me to China. And when I went to China to learn Chinese, in order to pay my bills, I had to teach English. And teaching English in China was basically the moment that it occurred to me that I was a teacher, that there was nothing I could do about it and that this was who I was.
And when I called my mother and said, “I'm coming back to America after five years in China. And I think I'll get a teaching job. Are you surprised?”
And she said, “no, dear. I always knew you'd come back home to being a teacher, because when you were a child, you would set up your stuffed animals in your room and I would go in there and you would be teaching them geometry. You'd have out your encyclopedias, you'd be showing them maps and. You've always just been a teacher, even as hard as you wanted to try.”
So it's kind of funny that I just came right back home and my mom just laughed.
Scott Lee: Yeah, it is kind of funny how many people I ask that a lot and it amazes me how many people say, “oh, I was teaching my younger siblings, or my stuffed animals or whoever, when I was a kid.”
Yeah, that seems to be a common thing.
Robyn Stringfellow: I was an only child, so I think the stuffed animals were a willing audience and they listened so well.
Scott Lee: I, I know. Isn't it amazing?
Robyn Stringfellow: No behavior problems whatsoever.
Scott Lee: So, what, what brought you to, public TV then.
Robyn Stringfellow: Well, I, like you, I was raised on public media.
I was a massive Mr. Rogers Neighborhood fan and Lebar Burton is the reason that I am a reader and a leader. Reading Rainbow was very transformative for me. I was an only child, and we lived in a place with not a lot of resources. So, PBS was how I grew up and I always loved it. And I taught in classrooms through the pandemic.
I've been in the classroom about almost 15 years, and the pandemic was really challenging. I think I thought I was a great teacher. I had won teacher of the year in two states. And I had sort of maybe a big ego about like,” well, I can, you know, I can do anything. I'm a great teacher. And the pandemic really humbled me tremendously.”
And though I enjoyed being a teacher during that time, I was wondering how I could utilize my experience to impact more kids, especially in Chattanooga. I had moved here. I had seen a lot of need and though I appreciated being in the classroom, I was really only serving 120 kids a year, and I really wanted to know, “how can I serve thousands?”
How can I bring my wisdom and my experience and my passion to more kids? And then I noticed that there was an opening at PBS and I thought, “oh my gosh, I wanted to work at PBS.” I always said, “if I ever left the classroom, it would only be to work at PBS or NPR,”
Scott Lee: right?
Robyn Stringfellow: And so, when I saw the job at PBS, I thought, this is God giving me an opening to move from the classroom into what we call America's largest classroom,
Scott Lee: And. I grew up on PBS too, although LaVar Burton was on Star Trek when, when I was growing up or I guess that was when I was in college. So sorry to date myself, but, Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were really big when I was growing up.
But a lot of people don't necessarily know all of the things that PBS does beyond just the programming. So can you share a little bit about, what's happening as far as TV programming with PBS, and then I want to talk about community outreach and those kinds of things as well.
So, so what does PBS do right now? On TV for teachers.
Robyn Stringfellow: Awesome. So yeah, we basically separated into content and engagement, right? So, the content piece is kind of what you talked about. It started with Mr. Rogers. It started with Sesame Street, and those were research based, evidence-oriented approaches to educating, families.
As a whole, not just the child, but the parents, the caregivers as well. Right. Those shows are aimed at adults and kids together, watching together and seeing how learning happenings together. So we've continued that trajectory. PBS continues to use research and a lot of evidence and a lot of very, very smart people in rooms to build those programs to make sure that we are doing the best by the families that we can.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm.
Robyn Stringfellow: And because we're free and publicly accessible by almost every family in America. It's important that we serve everyone, with really high-quality educational content. So, we've continued to make show after show we're staying sort of relevant with our content, but that we're also kind of moving the needle just a little bit forward.
Pushing into STEM skills or computational thinking things as they kind of pop up in educational lexicon or whatever verbiage we kind of tap into that. So, as, as AI came online or as robots came online, we definitely had shows that incorporated those kinds of thinking skills so that parents could teach those in their house without having a robot at all. You don't even need a computer. You can teach it with, you know, colored socks and paper. So that's kind of the, the trajectory that we've been on is to continue, not to follow the educational path, but to really forge it.
Scott Lee: Yeah, and I think one of the things, and a lot of teachers who are out there listening already know this, but others may not know, is the importance of the research.
Mr. Rogers predicted that back in the sixties that this is how it's gonna be different from commercial media for kids. He was competing with Captain Kangaroo, which was good TV for children, but the research piece is I think, a key that a lot of times people don't really know about and the evidence behind, uh, the programming.
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. We strive to be as engaging and as fun as Captain Kangaroo, but also to layer in really strong educational supports. And so, our abilities as non-commercial television are far enhanced. We're not beholden to any sort of funder. We don't have to make sure Coca-Cola gets what they want. We don't have that, right? So, because we're non-commercial television, our stakeholders are families and educators. So, we have to be beholden to them and what they need. And I think that keeps us free in a way to where our content can be engaging and educational. It can be fun and it can also be an excellent resource for families who aren't really offered the level of support that other communities might receive.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. And you mentioned COVID and that changed a lot of the programming and improved it in a lot of ways. Can you share a little bit about what happened with COVID programming? There was a lot of change happening at that time that has continued. Is that correct?
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. I was not, at PBS during that time, as I said, I was in the classroom. But what I know about what our work looked like during the pandemic was that when students were sent home.
Instead of a classroom, PBS as a whole, but more, more locally WTCI went to Hamilton County Schools [the largest local school district] and said, how can we help? What can we do? Can we open our studio and invite teachers in to continue making content that reaches those students while they're at home? And Hamilton County schools was very open to that.
So, what we ended up doing was opening our studio, brave teachers, who were kind of, you know, we were scared. It was a scary time. The brave teachers, they put on their masks. They drove over to the television studio, they got on tv. Even though most teachers will tell you they don't like being on tv.
And they just kept teaching and we picked up all of those shows. We broadcast them so that families could see them and kids could continue learning classroom content while they were at home. And when I first started at PBS, my job was to inventory those episodes when I first began, “Was, hey, you know, we have all these episodes that we did during the pandemic. Can you inventory them?”
And I just cried like a baby watching these episodes because it was just teachers doing their thing. They were so brave and they came in here under bright lights and shiny makeup and you know, just. Crazy conditions to just make sure that the kids would keep learning, that they would keep seeing familiar faces and that they would continue to get their education no matter what happened.
And I just cry. I still cry talking about it 'cause it was so moving.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And I, and I think about how hard that would be. I have done a little bit of work where I've been on tv, and it is so hard because. You don't have the audience right in front of you as a teacher. It's like if I say something that doesn't land and the kids are missing, I can see that right away. And you just don't get that interaction trying to teach through the tv. So that, that would be very challenging for a teacher.
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. And Mr. Rogers would've been so proud to see Chattanooga's best and brightest teachers getting into the studio and channeling him. Really? Scott Lee: Mm-hmm.
Robyn Stringfellow: You know how he always. Spoke to the screen and he gave the children time to respond. And we spoke back to the screen and you just saw a lot of teachers that you can tell grew up on PBS pouring their heart out for us. And that was a really magical thing.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. So, one of the things that is on the PBS website, the PBS education website is everything is split up however you need to find it by grade level and content area and all of those things. Can you share a little bit about how that looks? I, I don't know. You must have hundreds of people working on that too.
Robyn Stringfellow: Oh, it's amazing. PBS the platform that I'm talking about is PBSlearningmedia.org. And I encourage every teacher listening to this podcast, please go check it out. Send us your feedback. During the pandemic, PBS spent a lot of time, energy, and resources into creating this platform that was free.
That had high quality educational materials created by local teachers across the country and some international teachers as well to offer kind of video clips and segments with also teacher facing resources and student facing resources. And you can search by topic, you can search by grade level, you can search by standard.
If you teach in Tennessee and then you change to Georgia and you log in from Georgia, it will automatically give you the same lesson with Georgia standard, and that piece is huge for all of us teachers that are, you know, having to stick to the standards and make sure that those are incorporated.
It's really kind of magical to say, “I know I need to teach this topic. What does that look like in Georgia? What does it look like in North Carolina?” And so that platform has been amazing. I'm a history teacher by trade, so I love Ken Burns. I grew up on, on Ken Burns. I'm a noted fan of his. But his documentaries are 12 hours long and students are really not finding that approachable.
So, what PBS Learning Media has done is take those very long documentaries, chop them up into short segments, two or three minutes so that a student can get a taste of the Battle of Gettysburg, or World War II battles or things like that, and then have resources to pair it with them. So, then they'd be kind of become Ken Burns fans at an early age but not by having to watch 12 hours of something that's a little bit, heady. But they do that with all kinds of things. Nova is on there, any of our, our content for adults and for kids is on PBS learning, media. Preschool teachers have access to Sesame Street episodes there that are tapped into their standards.
So, it's a magical, magical program. And I, again, every teacher on here, please go to PBS learning media.org completely free. I know that the district pays sometimes for fancy programs that we're encouraged to use, but this is free and no one has to pay anything, so,
Scott Lee: um mm-hmm. And. Yeah, we all love free and it's so much easier. There was a time, and I did this when I was teaching history once where I've got a DVD and I've marked everything out so that I can show this section of, of a Ken Burns film and then skip ahead. We just need to watch this, you know? 'cause, yeah, you can't, you couldn't fit it all into a class.
So that really is amazing how well, and how easy and how accessible it is now compared to even what it was 10, 15 years ago.
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. And there's amazing science, like I said, science content, preschool content, everything that you want on PBSlearningmedia.org. And actually, we create for that. So, I'm a creator. I'm writing a piece right now with the Cherokee Nation about the Cherokee Perspectives on the American Revolution that we are building for that platform so that history teachers in Chattanooga can teach the American Revolution, but also localize it for their students. What was going on in Chattanooga, what were, what were the Cherokee during, during the revolution?
So, it's a really amazing platform because it's not just created by, amazing smart people in Washington DC These are teachers and PBS stations across the country working together.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. You mentioned some of the things you're doing in the community, and that's the piece that I think a lot of people don't see unless they're doing something-like right now as we're recording this, it's still summer and there's a few teachers in another room we walk through that are here doing some work, getting ready for school to start on their own for free. Nobody's paying them to be here, I'm sure. But a lot of times people, unless you're doing that, you may not realize, even if you're a teacher what all, your local PBS station is doing in the community. So, can you share a little bit more about that since you started talking about that just a minute ago?
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. I think that even when we see in the news that there are, conversations about PBS funding and defunding and even in the congressional spaces, having conversations about what PBS does. I'm screaming at the tv, “You guys don't even know half of what we do!”
Yes, we do content. Yes, we do PBS NewsHour is great. Yes, we make these amazing programs, but actually 50% of what most PBS stations do is on the ground in communities is engagement. And that is not well known. So yes, what we do, we do family workshops, we go to community events, we go to inside schools, collaborate with teachers on classroom content. We offer teacher trainings. We offer internships for young people. We have students from all, every university around in a radius that come here for internships, for mentorship opportunities. We, actually provide mentorship for young filmmakers. We do a one-minute film festival twice a year with two different schools, helping students create their own films, teaching them the tips of the trade, how to do audio, how to capture video, how to tell a story.
So, we do tons and tons of things like that. We have field trips, we have tours. As you saw, there's teachers that use the studio space. So, we are actively on the ground in communities. Every single day. That's most of what I do. The content really comes, you know, it's syndicated nationally. So, unless we're making local content with teachers, which is part of what we do, the content piece it kind of thrives on its own.
So, most of my work is. In the community, in schools, with partners, with the district, with everyone, that's a stakeholder.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. I mean, my stepdaughter, who's a teaching artist has been working with you doing things in the community as well. I was really kind of surprised, to find out how many local artists, you're not employing them full time, but how many local artists you all are working with, working with kids in community centers and places like that during the summer and on Saturdays and after school.
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. That is part of the ready to learn work, which has now been taken back. Right. But the Ready to Learn work is that Family Engagement Workshops and what you're speaking of with our connections with Arts Based Collaborative at UTC [University of Tennessee at Chattanooga], with Arts Build, with Hamilton County Schools,, with the Popup Project, which is a local dance nonprofit.
We've incorporated all of those partners into this work. We offer family workshops at the community centers. And families come, we feed them dinner and then they rotate from station to station. We provide 7 to 10 activity stations that are all tapped into learning goals that are aligned with standards.
And we love to bring in local artists. That is an amazing piece, is that we work with the artists, “Hey, we really need to get parents on board with foundational literacy and how to teach phonemic awareness and how to talk about spelling and putting words together.”
And they're like, “okay, no problem.”
And then they incorporate that and they go, they use music, they use art, they use dance. And then they show parents that there are 12 different entry points for this one thing, which is so basic as you know, spelling a three-letter word.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm. Right. And it's fun.
Robyn Stringfellow: And they have a great time.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And it's not like this is the only PBS station doing that. I mean, this is happening at every PBS station.
Robyn Stringfellow: That’s right.
Scott Lee: Maybe not happening now, but has been happening at every PBS station, the country.
Robyn Stringfellow: That's correct. Ready to Learn is about 30 years old, and that has directly, that comes from the Department of Education through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting into local communities to fund those parent workshops.
And those have been amazing. And unfortunately, there was an executive order to rescind that funding even though it had not run its course yet. It was a two-year grant and had not finished this term and was pulled back. And not every station has the benefit of an amazing, supportive community.
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm.
Robyn Stringfellow: But Chattanooga has been outstanding in supporting our work and we were able to secure some local funding streams to continue that work. Yeah. At least through the term that we promised, which has been wonderful.
Scott Lee: Right, but our listeners across the country in rural areas are probably not getting that anymore.
Robyn Stringfellow: Correct.
Scott Lee: Yeah, we can't, we can't avoid that elephant in the room that there is a problem that funding has been rescinded over this past summer. We're, we're recording this in, July of 2025. Everybody's read the news. We don't need to go go into that.
What do you see happening, especially for stations that are not as well funded at the local level as this station?
Robyn Stringfellow: It's a challenge. We certainly have to be very creative and innovative, with how we assert ourselves in maintaining the work that we do without the federal funding stream.
So, yeah, it's, it's hard. There are some markets that are very well funded by donors and they have a large population and they have a great revenue base. But smaller communities definitely have a bigger hill to climb with that kind of work. And again, I think screaming at the TV are all of the PBS people, saying you don't understand what we do.
It's hard for us to be able to tell that story properly because when people think of us, they think, “oh, it's Sesame Street.” It's like, yes, it's Sesame Street and so much more. We are on the ground and this funding going away, we'll take away. A lot of resources that small communities depend on, that under-resourced communities depend on that. Educators and stakeholders and caregivers- we provide them with support that they're going to miss. So, we're just getting more creative, getting more innovative, and hoping that, you know, things work out the way that we hope that they should.
Scott Lee: Is the, is there anything else that teachers can do?
Robyn Stringfellow: I think using PBSlearningmedia.org is useful because the more teachers that we have on that platform, utilizing the platform, giving us feedback about the importance of that platform, that is, that's content plus, right?
Scott Lee: Mm-hmm.
Robyn Stringfellow: That shows, and those are, all of those metrics are captured, so we're able to say, “Hey” in the state of Tennessee or in our, our, our area that we cover is actually four states. Mm-hmm. It's Western North Carolina. It's parts of Alabama, uh, Tennessee and Georgia, parts of Georgia. And we're able to capture those metrics and say to potential funders or say to uh, stakeholders, “Hey, we had 10,000 teachers that access this content in the past two months.”
Don't let this go away. And supporting teachers is something that a lot of people do care about. You could sign up to become a member if you wanted to. You can donate to PBS if you want to or just help us get the story out. Yes, we do content, but we also do engagement workshops. We do mentorship, we do internships, we help young film creators, we help local producers.
There's just a lot that we do that's engagement. That's most of my job. So, yeah, just know that we're out there and if you want us to come to your classroom, come on. If you wanna take a tour or a field trip here. Come on.
Scott Lee: Yeah. So, so a teacher. I'm just thinking in, in, in an underserved community even, you know, there's more than just calling your congressman, even if it's going to a different PBS station in your same state and using those resources, that's gonna help too, right?
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. We need those numbers. We need you to tell your district officials and, you know, tell your community this stuff matters to us. It's helpful. So yeah, I think just, just being advocates and being ambassadors for us is a really, is a wonderful gift and we're thankful for that.
Scott Lee: So can you share a story or stories about either, teachers, students, , that you've worked with, , in the community?
Robyn Stringfellow: Oh, so many. We have one family. We've done, as I said, two monthly workshops for the past two years at two community centers, and we have a one family. With three children of multiple ages, and that family has come to absolutely every single workshop that we've hosted. If we do a community event at Miller Park, they're there.
If we do an event at a school, they're there. I mean, this family is just died in the wool, and one of the children in the family is on the autism spectrum. She has very, very high intelligence and is an extremely compassionate and loving young lady. In her school career, she has really struggled with interpersonal relations.
With other students or feeling accepted, feeling a sense of belonging. And again, these are things we can't measure, of course. But, she, you know, had struggled in her, in her schooling up to that point. And her mother will tell you that once she started coming to PBS Kids workshops with us. She just blossomed the environment and the tone and the culture that we set is one of belonging and acceptance and love.
All of this is, of course, based on Mr. Rogers. And so she came in, she, she dipped her toes into the workshops and she was, you know, hesitant and she was participating in the activities, but staying to herself. Then, maybe three or four workshops in she just decided to grab a friend and start dancing.
And the artists were part of this. They're playing music, they're dancing. And this child just began opening up and starting to make friends and starting to become more interpersonal dancing and enjoying the activities with others. And her mother was just in tears. I love to see my child feeling like she belongs, feeling like she's accepted and making friends so readily and I don't know that we deserve that level of credit, but she credits us with creating an environment where the child felt like.
They could be themselves and make friends and open up. And now she says when she goes to school, she's different, she's more open, she's getting along with her friends more, she's making changes in how she receives other humans. So, I think that is a big, like I said, it's not measurable. And you know, as teachers we often have to defend the work that we do with data and metrics and numbers. Fostering a sense of belonging is not necessarily measurable, but when you are a mother of a child and you get to see that it's measured for you.
Scott Lee: Yeah. And, and you know. Data is not just numbers.
Robyn Stringfellow: Right.
Scott Lee: So, absolutely.
Robyn Stringfellow: And that mother really says, the PBS Kids has created that, that landscape. And there's other parents who've said the same thing, “Oh, my child really was in a shell until they came to these workshops. And were able to interact with different kinds of people.”
And the, the people that come to our workshops are from a variety of different neighborhoods and backgrounds. And everyone just has a great time. We're playing the drums, we're dancing, we're singing, we're playing with robots.
I mean, it's just incredible. And even, even the parents have fun. The grandparents have fun. The aunties and uncles have fun. I mean, everyone really enjoys it, and I think that is what PBS kids is about, and that's what Mr. Rogers is about. I had the chance to go to Mr. Rogers' hometown this year. Wow. At a PBS conference, and I got to see his institute and I got to see his hometown, and it was all with educators from PBS, and we just, all of us, there was a hundred of us.
We just basically cried all day, every day the whole time because Mr. Rogers. It was so inspiring for so many of us and his legacy lives on in this work, in the community work that we do in places where commercial television doesn't go there. Netflix is not in these neighborhoods. Hulu's not in these neighborhoods.
They're just not there. And so, if we're not there, who's there?
Scott Lee: Right? And, and they're still not sending people in.
Robyn Stringfellow: Right. And so that's kind of what matters to us is being where no one else is and caring where no one else cares. And, hoping that we can build bridges and build community through learning and play and joy.
And it's been a wonderful, wonderful road for us. It's been excellent. And just because we're defunded, we are not defeated
Scott Lee: well. So, where can people go to find out more? You mentioned PBS Media's website. We'll definitely put a link to that on our website.
Robyn Stringfellow: Absolutely. PBS kids.org has tons of games and apps for early educators, for parents, for kids PBS learning media.org for classroom teachers homeschool parents as well.
This is a wonderful resource for homeschool families. And go to WTCITV.org if you wanna donate or see what we're up to. If you wanna volunteer for one of our events we have a huge event in April called “Be My Neighbor Day.” That's the spirit of Mr. Rogers as well. We bring out tons of community partners and everyone from the city who is, is engaged in education loves this event 'cause we're all together and we love on families.
And come volunteer or just bring your kids and have a good day, and just visit us and get to know who we are. And if you're a classroom teacher that needs a field trip. Call us.
Scott Lee: Well, great. Thank you so much for joining us today, Robyn.
Robyn Stringfellow: Thank you so much for having me and for being an advocate for PBS and for kids. Really appreciate it.
Scott Lee: Great. Thank you.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net. Also, please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Bluesky is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
This has been episode 8 of the 2025 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee.
