Joan Ganz Cooney

Join the SCV Senior Center for a historical reenactment of the Joan Ganz Cooney, considered the “Founding Mother of Educational Television,” on Thursday May 25 from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. in Rooms A-1 and A-2 at the SCV Senior Center.

Louise Willard, a member of the American Association of University Women who brings notable women in history to life, will bring Cooney to life.

Born in 1929, Joan Ganz Cooney first created TV programming as a documentary producer for public television. She cared about matters of race, injustice, and the imbalance of opportunity. Through her work, she began to think about television as a teaching medium. After conducting a formal study on the subject, she used her findings to help convince others of television’s potential for children, and—with financial assistance from the Carnegie Corporation, the U.S. Department of Education and the Ford Foundation—she established the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) in 1968. With her vision beginning to take shape, Cooney immediately set to work producing its first series, the perennial favorite Sesame Street.

As one of the first female executives in American television, her appointment was called “one of the most important television developments of the decade.” In 1990, she was the first female non-performer to be inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1995.

Join AAUW’s Louise Willard for this fascinating reenactment.