We here at PBS SoCaL Education have been making some changes and while change is exciting, we want to make sure we keep you up to date on all of the other the exciting things we have been up to in the past few weeks.

PBS SoCaL Education made its first trip to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books where Curious George made an appearance and kids and families were able to snap pictures with him. The PBS SoCaL booth hosted a reading corner with furniture donated by Kohburg where kids could stop by and cuddle up with a good book or participate in Curious George and literacy-themed activities. Check out some photos from the day on our Flickr stream.

There’s nothing that PBS SoCaL Education loves more than kids, and that’s why we celebrated Día de los Niños (Day of the Child) in Southern California communities. Curious George danced and celebrated during this special time for kids in Los Angeles and Santa Ana. The festivities included traditional Mexican dancing, music, and performances from local Hispanic groups and arts and crafts activities for the kids. ¡Qué divertido!

Teachers were invited to raise their voices to the challenges they face in the drop out crisis during a one-hour discussion hosted by PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan at the GRAMMY Museum. Teachers from all across Southern California talked about ways the community can come together to help today’s students graduate from high school and continue to be successful in their lives. The discussion is part of the national American Graduate Initiative and can be seen in full on our website. Join the conversation at americangraduate.org.

PBS SoCaL Education joined the Orange County Department of Education to celebrate young authors and illustrators at the 11th Annual Young Authors’ Faire. Special guests Kareem Abdul Jabar, Super Why! and Princess Presto encouraged kids to read and write while community organizations offered information and resources to help early literacy. Awards for the annual PBS KIDS Go! Writer’s Contest were also given out to the K-3 winners for their amazing stories.

Super Readers to the rescue! PBS SoCaL Education is helping to create super readers at local preschools with special visits from Super Why! and Princess Presto to encourage reading and early literacy. Los Angeles Unified Preschools (LAUP), The Castle in Hawthorne and Longfellow in Azusa, welcomed the super readers and watched the new SUPER WHY! Around the World Adventure special episode, did arts and crafts and listened to a story time reading. PBS SoCaL also gave the preschool students books to take home and continue their reading adventure.   

PBS SoCaL honored the work of students and teachers from more than 40 schools from across the state of California at the 46th Annual California Student Media Festival. The ceremony was held at the beautiful Orange County High School of the Arts Margaret A Webb Theater and we had more than 300 people in attendance!  A total of 67 awards were given out in celebration of student media and 3 overall winners received $1,000 cash prizes thanks to the continued support of Wells Fargo. We are also happy to announce that this year's festival will be turned into a on-air program that will be on PBS SoCaL in September. So stay tuned!