For Halloween this year, I dressed up as Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus. Ms. Frizzle is definitely a "media icon" from my childhood and my nieces in Kindergarten recently got a collection of the Magic School Bus DVDs and watched one together.
I absolutely loved watching this show growing up and can still vividly remember some episodes and what was going on when I watched them. In class, we talked about educational media and I think that I definitely learned things from the Magic School Bus and it often reinforced ideas I was learning in school already. I was probably in 1st grade when I started watching this show.
One of the things I loved about this show was that I had this packet that went along with some of the episodes for me to do my own experiments or investigating of my own. I would then complete these little projects with my sisters and my mom when a parent's help was needed.
I think that providing educational materials
to go hand in hand with education shows increases what children will learn from the program by a significant amount. These materials helped me to develop a curiosity of the world around me and also got me excited for my classes at school each day.
Another thing that the Magic School Bus and Ms. Frizzle taught me was that it was cool to be smart and cool to learn new things. It often gave me confidence in learning abilities in elementary school. This did not last into middle school unfortunately, but I do think Ms. Frizzle shows girls especially that school, learning, science is not just for boys and that is so cool to be smart.
I think in a world that is continuously trying to limit women capabilities by telling them what they can and can't do, I think it is so important to have media portraying women pursuing education and careers in variety of fields, but especially science. Ms. Frizzle enthusiasm for science helped me to also get excited about sciences and helped me picture my self pursuing a career as a archaeologist or an astronaut or a chemist, etc..
The Magic School Bus is not a perfect tv show and does have some gaps, but compared to the media children are exposed to today, I think it is a very safe and educational alternative.
As you can see, I have added a picture of my Ms. Frizzle costume - it is from the electricity lecture.
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