Joan Ganz was born in Arizona in 1929. She was raised in a conventional family and was expected to be a housewife and raise a family. When she went to college, she was encouraged to study education because teaching was a proper career for a woman, according to her mother. She had no interest in teaching and was more interested in theater. She received an education degree because her family would not support her interest in theater.
Following graduation, Joan moved to Washington, DC, and took a clerical job with the U.S. State Department. She became aware of Father James Keller, and he encouraged her to pursue her interests in television and media. This became the turning point in her life.
She decided to return to Arizona and get a job as a journalist, even though she had no training in that field. This led to other opportunities in the developing television industry. She had relocated to New York City.
When a colleague left CBS to work for an educational TV station, she was shocked that educational TV existed. She had found her life’s purpose.
Later, she applied for a position at the first public TV position in the New York area. The position was for a publicist, but the station really needed producers. She was hired to be a producer even though she had no background in this career path. She produced a series of TV programs dealing with current issues of national concern.
In the mid-60s, Joan hosted a dinner party at her home for friends she had met in the world of television. When the conversation turned to the possibility of using TV to educate young children, there was immediate interest.
Joan was commissioned to do a study of how TV could be used in preschool education. The result was a 55-page document that became the framework for the creation of the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW). Sesame Street became the product of CTW.
When Sesame Street first went on the air in 1969, it was an immediate success. Joan never had any children of her own, but was an influential contributor to the development of children across America.
Joan Ganz had a career founded on hope. She had no plan for the work she would do. She was not trained to do the work she was paid to do. But she had hope, and hope is often as valuable as what you can learn from a formal environment. And with that hope, she gave millions of children a head start in life.
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“The only way that magic works is by hard work. But work can be fun.”–Jim Hanson