Hello, and come in

My name is Sheila Pagan, and I have taught preschool in Pittsburgh since 1979. That is twenty classes of three- and four-year-olds, and every one of those classes has watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood with me. For the first ten years we watched on a television on a rolling cart that had to be borrowed from the church office. Since 1990 I have taped the programs at home and brought them in, so we can watch at our own time and stop the tape when someone has a question. Someone always has a question.

I was a little old for the program when it began. I was twelve in 1968, when it started going out across the country, and I would not have admitted to anyone at school that I watched it. But my brother Paul was seven, and my mother asked me to sit with him in the afternoons, and so I sat with him, to keep an eye on him. I kept an eye on it for years. My mother says that before that, when I was very small, I watched The Children's Corner on WQED, where Daniel and King Friday got their start, though I am sorry to say I don't remember it myself.

This page is my thank-you note. It is not an official page of any kind. It is just one teacher's way of saying that the best teacher on television lives and works right here in our city, and that I have learned a good deal of my own job from him.

Why him

People who don't have small children sometimes smile when I say this, but I mean it with all my heart: Mister Rogers is the best teacher on television. Here is why I think so, as plainly as I can put it.

He is slow, on purpose. He speaks slowly, he moves slowly, and he leaves quiet spaces where a child can think. When he asks a question, he waits, and he looks right into the camera while he waits, so that a child at home has time to answer out loud. I have seen children answer him. Grown-ups are always hurrying children along. He never does.

He does the same things every day. He comes in the door, hangs up his jacket, zips up a cardigan sweater, and trades his shoes for sneakers. He feeds the fish. Small children love to know what comes next, and every day he lets them know. Those sweaters, by the way, were knitted by his mother.

He tells children the truth. Over the years he has made programs about a new baby in the house, a first haircut, going to the doctor and to the hospital, a pet that dies, and parents who divorce. He doesn't pretend these things are easy. He says what will happen, and he says what it might feel like, and then he lets the feeling be all right.

He keeps pretend and real apart. When it is time to visit the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, he says so, and the little red Trolley carries us there through a tunnel and brings us back again. A three-year-old can always tell which part is pretend. I wish every program for children were so careful.

He is a musician. He writes the songs himself, and there is real jazz piano in the background of almost everything. My children hear good music every day without anybody telling them it is good for them.

He is a minister who doesn't preach. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister, and his church gave him the unusual charge of serving children and families through television. But you would never know it from the program, which belongs to every child, whatever church their family goes to or doesn't. He simply treats each child as if he or she matters very much. That is the whole sermon, and it is enough.

A few facts, for the record

About that Senate hearing. In the spring of 1969, public television's money from Congress was in danger of being cut in half, and Mister Rogers went to Washington to testify before the subcommittee on communications. The chairman, Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, sounded impatient when it was Mister Rogers' turn, and nobody expected a man who made a children's program to change his mind. Mister Rogers spoke for only a few minutes. He did not read the long statement he had prepared. He simply told the senator, in that same calm voice, what his program tried to do for children: to help them understand their feelings, including the angry ones, and to know that they could handle them. He even recited the words of one of his songs, What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel? By the time he finished, the senator had been won over, and the funding went through. I tell this story to every parent who asks me whether one quiet person can make a difference.

Who lives in Make-Believe

Nearly every day, the Trolley comes rolling along its track in Mister Rogers' living room, rings its bell, and carries us off to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where the puppets and a few kind grown-ups live. King Friday XIII rules from his castle and is very fond of rules and long words. Queen Sara is the calm one. Daniel Striped Tiger lives in a clock and is shy. Lady Elaine Fairchilde lives in the Museum-Go-Round and is anything but shy. X the Owl and Henrietta Pussycat share a big oak tree.

Almost all of the puppets are worked and voiced by Mister Rogers himself, which still amazes me. There are a good many more neighbors than I can fit here, so I made them their own page:

Five favorite visits

Most programs have a visit in them: Mister Rogers goes somewhere, or someone comes to see him, or Mr. McFeely, the delivery man who is always in a hurry, brings a film to show us how something is made. These are the five kinds of visit my classes and I love best, in no particular order.

1. How crayons are made. This is the all-time favorite in my classroom. You see the colored wax melted and poured into molds, cooled into crayons, wrapped in their paper and sorted into boxes. Every child who sees it wants to know who decides the colors. Afterward we always do crayon rubbings, and nobody breaks a crayon for at least a day.

2. The wading pool with Officer Clemmons. On a hot day in 1969, Mister Rogers put his feet in a little plastic wading pool and invited Officer Clemmons, the neighborhood policeman, to cool off with him, and the two of them sat side by side with their feet in the same water. I was thirteen and I watched it with Paul. I didn't understand until I was older what a quiet and brave thing that was to put on television that year.

3. When a musician comes to call. Real musicians stop by the house and play, right up close, so you can see their fingers move and hear what the instrument sounds like by itself. My children sit perfectly still for these, which is something to see in a room of four-year-olds.

4. Places that can be scary. The doctor's office, the barber chair, the hospital. He goes first, and shows us every step and every instrument, and talks about how it might feel. Two parents have told me that their children walked into a doctor's office calmer because of him.

5. Chef Brockett's bakery. Anything that involves dough. We are a preschool. We have opinions about dough.

What my preschoolers learn: feelings have names

If I had to say in one sentence what my children learn from Mister Rogers, it would be this: feelings have names, and once you know the name of a feeling, you can talk about it instead of throwing a block.

A three-year-old who is angry doesn't know he is angry. He only knows that something big is happening inside him and that his hands want to hit. The first and most important thing we do in my classroom is give that big thing a name. Mad. Sad. Scared. Jealous. Lonely. Proud. Excited. When Daniel Striped Tiger admits that he is scared, or when Mister Rogers talks about being angry, the children hear someone they trust say the name of a feeling calmly, without shame. And then they start saying the names themselves.

We keep a chart on the wall with faces for each feeling, and at circle time each child can point to the one that fits. You would be amazed how many fights end at that chart. Here are some other things I watch my children learn, slowly, over a year:

• That it is all right to be sad, and that sad doesn't last forever.
• That grown-ups go away and come back. (He leaves at the end of every program, and he always comes back the next day. For a child who cries at drop-off, that matters more than I can say.)
• That everyone is different on the outside and that this is fine.
• That pretend is wonderful, and that pretend is pretend.
• That a person can be gentle and strong at the same time.

For parents: watching together

Parents ask me all the time whether it is all right to let their children watch television. I am not going to scold anybody. I will only say that half an hour of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is a very different thing from half an hour of almost anything else, and that it is best of all when you watch it with them. A few suggestions, from one teacher:

1. Sit down with them, at least sometimes. The dishes will wait half an hour. Your child will remember that you watched.
2. Don't rush to fill the quiet. When he pauses and waits for an answer, let your child answer. It may feel silly. It isn't.
3. Talk afterward. Ask what happened in Make-Believe. Ask what Daniel was worried about. You will learn a great deal about what your own child is worried about.
4. Use the names. When your child is upset later in the week, you can say "You seem frustrated, the way King Friday was." Children love to be understood, and a shared story makes it easier.
5. If a program brings up something hard, a move, a new baby, a death in the family, take it as an invitation. He has opened the door. You can walk through it with your child at your own pace.
6. Turn the set off when it's over. Then go outside, or get out the crayons. I have a feeling he would approve, though of course I can only speak for myself.

Our new class starts on Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Twelve new three-year-olds, twelve new sets of feelings to learn the names of, and one very old videotape of the crayon factory. I can't wait.