With a presidential election on the horizon and USA-boosting Summer Olympic coverage dominating the news cycle, it’s a great time to teach kids about what it means to be a good citizen.
Together We Can, a new series of two- to three-minute videos on PBS Kids, seeks to do just that, using songs to convey the civic virtues of things like rules, the Constitution and neighborhood helpers.
A collaboration between PBS Kids, Sesame Workshop and CPB, the series’ 20 music videos are aimed at 4- to 8-year-olds. Children in that age group might understand what a teacher does, for example, but not how educators serve the community as a whole. Other concepts include the 50 states, the importance of listening and the idea that voting — whether for a president or a pizza topping — helps us make decisions that serve the most people.
Coming ‘Together’
Together We Can is one part of a multipronged stab at civics education coming out of PBS Kids. While teaching children about “people in their neighborhood” is nothing new for public media, those lessons have typically been sprinkled through shows instead of being a specific focus. In recent years, though, the network has taken a more serious look at civics-specific content, says Adriano Schmid, VP of PBS Kids content. That effort has included commissioning research and soliciting feedback from parents on which aspects of civics they thought were important for their children to learn.
“We felt like there was definitely something more focused that we could create,” Schmid says. “With 2024 being a big year for civics in the U.S. and around the world, we decided to put a nice cluster of programming around community and civics out during the summer.”
First, Schmid says, the network green-lit a second season of City Island, ordering 20 additional episodes of the animated series of shorts about a faux New York City where everything is alive. Because the series’ first season had been so successful, streaming 70 million times cross-platform or an average of about 6 million streams a month, the PBS Kids team decided to launch a 10-episode spinoff, City Island Sings. Like Together We Can, the short music videos package kid-friendly civics topics inside incredibly catchy original songs. (Both launched earlier this summer.)
Around the same time those City Island videos were being developed, Sesame Workshop approached PBS Kids with a pitch for Together We Can. The Workshop’s creative team developed the idea in response to a CPB request for proposals for civics content aimed at children. (CPB also recently launched an RFP for civics content targeted at general audiences to launch in 2026 in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.)
“[Together We Can] felt so complementary to everything that we were doing,” Schmid says. “We knew it would be a nice musical offering for our kids and families, and that it would touch on all sorts of topics that spark kids’ curiosity and conversation.” CPB had already agreed to fund part of the Workshop’s project and PBS Kids made up the difference while signing on as a creative partner and distributor.
An outside production company, Halleloo Creative, was hired to create the videos. An outside music director, Bud’da, composed the songs that you hear in the clips. Though he’s perhaps best known for his work with artists like Aaliyah, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, Bud’da had previously collaborated with the Workshop on the theme for Mecha Builders and produced tracks for kids shows like The Proud Family and Studio DC: Almost Live, which also happened to feature The Muppets.
Teaching tricky topics
Sesame Workshop used its in-house curriculum and education team to help determine the videos’ topics. “We wanted to focus on participation, rights and rules and democratic principles,” says Mindy Fila, senior producer at Sesame Workshop. “Under those three things, we came up with 20 topics.” Each idea was categorized as “listen, learn, or lead.” A video about symbols of democracy, for instance, went into the learn bucket since most kids (and parents) might not know the cultural significance of an American bison, a rose or an oak tree.
Another clip, “Responsibility,” is more about leading, Fila says. The clip aims to teach kids what it means to be an active member of their households, schools and communities so “they can see the world beyond their world.” In the hip-hop inspired clip, that means sharing school supplies with classmates, working in a community garden, or donating toys or games to those less fortunate.
“[The curriculum team] gave us talking points for every video that we could provide to the production company and the music director,” says Fila. “We wanted to make sure we were educating kids on these complex topics, because civics can be heavy. It can be hard. We wanted to break it all down into bite-size material that kindergarteners and first and second graders could understand.”
It’s a method that’s certainly helpful for more varsity-level topics, like “Constitution,” which uses a call-and-response ditty to introduce kids to the document, highlighting three of its more accessible amendments: the First, guaranteeing the right to free speech; Thirteenth, abolishing slavery; and Nineteenth, granting the right to vote to women.
“Because the constitution is so dense and complex, we really leaned into our education and curriculum team to figure out which amendments to call out or which ones kids would even understand,” says Fila. “We also had to be mindful about the length of each song, since we didn’t want to go over the three-minute mark.”
“Everything that we’re doing has to be age appropriate,” says Schmid. “Some of the videos aren’t that complex. But there are some topics, like the Constitution, we can dive a little more into.”
“We’re introducing the concept that there is a Constitution and that it has amendments, but it’s not a history lesson,” Schmid says. “It’s just about how our community was formed and how it follows rules and laws and has branches of government.” Once the germ of these ideas are in there, Schmid says, a kid can pursue it further or just rediscover it later in life, when they’re older and more ready to dive into what a document like the Constitution really means.
Variety and diversity
In both City Island Sings and Together We Can, musical variety is key. Putting a lesson into a rap track, show tune or even disco bop increases its earworm potential — and its learning potential. If you like to listen to a song and want to hear it again, then you might absorb its message even more, whether consciously or not.
Take, for instance, Schoolhouse Rock’s legendary “I’m Just A Bill,” which always comes up when you’re talking about civics-minded singalongs. “The reason people reference that song, even now, is because it was memorable,” says Fila. “The songs were catchy. … You want to make all the songs repeatable, because you want the kid to shut the videos off but then keep singing the songs. You want the memory to remain.”
Indeed, Fila hopes the songs — and the videos — stick around for years to come. Because the videos are “evergreen” she says, they should be able to keep playing on screens and in classrooms for the foreseeable future.
The videos “are going to help kids understand what their role is in their home and beyond,” she explains. “It’s about seeing the world in a different way, and that’s important content all the time.”