Sesame Street turns 50 this year. Is it still relevant to you if you’re all grown up? What can you learn from Sesame Street if you’re an adult learner? Quite a lot, if you ask me.

The old episodes of Sesame Street aired on Polish TV when I was growing up. We got our own Polish flavour of it in the end, but for me, the original episodes with a Polish lector voiced over them were the best thing ever.

Apart from bits of English, which I was able to pick up from underneath the Polish, I learned lots more. Seeing people (and monsters) of all colours was not usual in a country that’s 99% white – this taught me early lessons in being accepting and tolerant. Looking at stories which were unlike the tradition at home helped my imagination to get ready for the unexpected. I can honestly say that Sesame Street (along with Cartoon Network, but that’s another story!) was one of the best things I could find as a young language learner.

But you don’t have to watch it to be inspired by it. In fact, this week I’ve been thinking about how this TV show made its big mission possible – and how anyone, learning anything, could bemefit from some Big Bird, Ernie & Bert style of thinking. Here’s a quick summary of what I came up with; feel free to add your thoughts.

Learning as a whole person (monster)

Sesame Street characters learn new things by doing all sorts of stuff. They talk. They try to read. They sing and listen to songs. They break stuff. They eat cookies. They help others make something. The list goes on.

When you think of learning, do you sometimes find that you only think about what happens in your head, in a classroom? If so, perhaps you’re missing some important and exciting bits.

Sesame Street tries hard to show everyone that every bit of them is useful and valid. Even adult learners need to be reminded of this every now and then.

Whole person learning: what you can do

Record as many senses as possible connected to the thing you’re about to learn. Pay extra attention to the ones you wouldn’t normally consider. How can the “left-behind” senses help your learning?

To learn more about whole-person (holistic) learning, please follow this link.

Social learning, by being social

This point connects with the one above. The Street is where everything happens. Problems are solved. New people (monsters) meet the existing crew. Someone helps somebody else understand something. The Street is where people share, live, have fun. Every minute spent on Sesame Street is the time for growing and changing with others, for others, because of others’ presence.

I think this is something that is really difficult to replicate fully, especially in the era of online learning. And that’s a shame; for language learning especially, but for any type of learning project in general, being with other people while you learn or use your thing can motivate you, show you how well you’re doing, and teach you how your thing works in the real world.

Social learning: what you can do to get started

Go through all your social networks and search for your “learning buddies.” They can be neighbours, friends, colleagues – but make sure you can meet them face to face. Once you’ve found a few candidates, ask yourself: “what part of my learning adventure can I share with them?” Then set out to do just that – over coffee, or somewhere fun. Don’t make it super challenging or serious! It’s great if all of you have fun.

To learn more about social learning theories, you can start here.

The long run, at your pace

Sesame Street has been around for 50 years. It’s filmed thousands of episodes, tens of thousands of minutes. This is an epic enterprise, in more than one way.

First of all, this is a TV project that does not fear coming back to do something again and again. There must have been countless episodes “sponsored by” the same letters and numbers. The creators must have returned to the same concepts, values, or ideas many times, and they covered them from scratch. Sesame Street, through its 50 years, recognized that there is value in coming back to the roots, in showing how the basics work.

The reason for this possibly can be explained by my second perspective on the show’s longevity: the contents of the show may repeat, but the context will always be subtly different. Characters, stories, events will change. People will come and go. This is another valuable lesson in the world obsessed with new-ness, in a largely-online reality where the pressure to create something fresh is immense. Sesame Street may remain the same, but every “lesson” is slightly different, and each time, the audience (on both sides of the TV screen) changes slightly, too.

Finally – and this is one of the most touching things a media project can do – Sesame Street knows how to pace itself so that nobody gets left behind. The world around it may have accellerated, but the show (as well as its language, delivery, camera angles etc) remains just fast enough to make sure that the young learners manage to keep up. This means that the script writers, directors, and actors need to make sure that slower learners – or keen kids who are just having a bad day – still feel like they belong.

Achievement in lifelong learning: what you can do

On the right-hand side of a sheet of paper, write down a suitably distant date. For me, this could be “2050.” Think about your learning project. What type of person will you be at that time, assuming you will continue learning and succeeding? What else will change? Write it down. Once that’s done, write your current date on the left-hand side of the paper. Fill in the spaces in between with your relevant milestones, and habits or actions you can do in the meantime. Remember to pace yourself!

Photo by Walter Lim, CC Licence: CC BY 2.0