How 'Sesame Street' led Seaman High School senior Anna Brodine to international awards

Big Bird and Elmo were the puppets that taught Anna Brodine how to be a good person, but it was Joan Ganz Cooney who taught her what it takes to be exceptional.

All of Brodine's family grew up watching the long-broadcast children's show, but it wasn't until Brodine was a history student at Seaman High School that she learned about the phenomenal, but generally unknown, woman behind the program.

Cooney's story deeply inspired Brodine — so much that she set out to make a documentary on the children's television pioneer.

"'Sesame Street' is so well known, but when you find someone like (Cooney) who is just so inspirational and she never had her story told, it became a lot easier to connect to her than the puppets," Brodine said.

In learning about Cooney, though, Brodine also learned about the value of hard work, winning national and international honors for the resulting documentary.

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Who was Joan Ganz Cooney?

Most everyone has seen "Sesame Street," Brodine said, but few people know the true history of how the TV show came to be. Some might credit the show to Jim Henson, who did, in fact, create the show's Muppets.

But it was Cooney who was the show's driving force, in coming up with the show, creating scripts and including life lessons that pioneered the concept of television as an educational medium for children.

"The shows that kids were watching back then were shows like 'Scooby Doo,' and she had the first educational kids show," Brodine said. "Without her, most of us growing up would not have had something that was actually stimulating for our brains."

Cooney's story of breaking barriers and overcoming challenges as a woman in television in the 1960s especially resonated with Brodine.

In researching Cooney's life story and involvement with "Sesame Street," Brodine learned about the pains Cooney took to include valuable lessons for urban and disadvantaged youth in the show.

"In watching and reading hundreds of interviews and articles, I saw so many kids who connected with the show in a way they couldn't anywhere else," she said. "Like kids who had autism and found a connection with 'Sesame Street' when they introduced a Muppet with autism."

Volunteering for homework

At Seaman High School, the school's social studies department encourages students to dive deep into history projects. In department chair Susan Sittenauer's class, dozens of students create documentaries and other history projects to compete in the school's annual National History Day and other external contests.

Brodine, a student in Sittenauer's seminar class, never had her as a history teacher. But when "Sesame Street celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019 and Brodine learned about Cooney's life story, she knew she had to participate in the documentary contest.

She even started research work over one of her high school summers, putting in even more work researching, recording and editing the project. She would perfect the documentary in 15-minute chunks between classes, tennis and work — often taking late night phone calls with advice and tips from Sittenauer to improve the short film.

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Sittenauer said few of her students have ever shown the perseverance, independence and self-motivation Bodine did in creating the documentary.

"When you think about documentaries like the kind you'd see on the History Channel, hers, in my opinion, rivals that," Sittenauer said. "It's not just that she's only a high school student, but the fact that she self-taught herself all of this."

Brodine's work paid off, and in 2021, her documentary placed twice at the MY HERO Film Festival Awards, taking first place in the Eva Haller Women Transforming Media YOUTH Award and second place in the High School Documentary categories.

The documentary was also a top 10 finisher in the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes contest in 2020.

It was a tiring, exhausting process to complete the documentary — but one that made her appreciate Cooney's work even more, Brodine said.

"Because of 'Sesame Street' and all of the work Joan Ganz Cooney has put in, more than 50 years of kids have had better lives and educational lessons," Brodine said.

"The world would probably be a meaner place without her."

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Seaman High's Anna Brodine wins international awards for documentary