Teach Your Children Well

Sitka, AK, 1998

Teach Your Children Well is a series of 24 discussion programs on children's health produced by Raven Radio in partnership with three area health organizations: the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), the Center for Community/Infant Learning Program, and the State of Alaska Public Health Nurse. During the planning phase of the project, these partners surveyed family service workers and community health aides in the eight translator communities served by Raven Radio to identify the most pressing issues in health care for children ages 0 to 6. The issues identified fell into six broad categories: injuries, parenting and discipline, weight, self-care, violence at home, and secondhand smoke.

Using resource material gathered by the partners, Raven Radio produced four seven-minute programs in each category. The series host was a pediatric nurse and mother of a six-year-old and a two-year-old. For each program she teamed up with one of three co-hosts, including a day-care director, a family therapist, and a drug and alcohol abuse counselor for teens. Each co-host was also the parent of children in our target group (0 to 6). The goal of Teach Your Children Well was to deliver basic, sound, topical information from peers of the parents in the audience-not from know-it-all professionals far removed from the realities of parenting.

The partners assembled the source material for every program into a large binder called a Community Action Kit. The kits were hand-delivered by itinerant staff to the same health aides and family service workers surveyed at the beginning of the project, and to their counterparts in communities served by other regional public radio stations running the series.

This material was also available free to anyone interested in the welfare of young children-teachers, day-care providers, and parents-via an automated fax-back server connected to a toll-free telephone line. Listeners were invited to call the toll-free "resource line" at the conclusion of every program to find out more about the day's topic. Besides receiving faxes, callers could also choose to listen to brief lists of relevant phone numbers, Web sites, and publications.

Programs aired twice weekly for six months over Raven Radio and its five regional sister stations in southeast Alaska. Following the run of the 24-part series, Raven Radio broadcast three monthly half-hour call-in programs hosted by one of the series' hosts and a guest expert in the care of young children: a pediatrician, an emotional health counselor, and the director of an in-home developmental program for Alaskan Natives. Although the call-ins were available only in Sitka and Raven Radio's eight translator communities, listener interest more than justified the effort to create a forum for an open discussion of children and parenting.

Contact Information

Teach Your Children Well
Robert Woolsey, Producer
Tel: 907-747-5353

SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC)
Lisa Sadleir-Hart, Director of Health Promotion, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium
Tel: 907-966-8736

Awards:

KCAW Round One Additional Funding

Teach Your Children Well received a combined total of $32,000 of additional funding from the Grossett Foundation, Infant Learning, and Island Counseling Service.

KCAW Round Two Additional Funding

Teach Your Children Well received $60,000 from the Reuben E. Crossett Endowed Alaskan Fund, $12,000 from Islands Counseling and the Center for Community, and $26,000 from Alaska Children's Fund, for a total package of $98,000 for project expansion.