Note: “Helping the Helpers” is a CFA spotlight on the legacy of Fred Rogers and his role in helping communities see the value of creating nurturing learning environments for preschool-aged children.

‘Radical Kindness’

Dr. Dana Winters, director of Simple  Interactions and academic programs at St. Vincent College’s Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media, teaches a course called “What Would Fred Rogers Do?”

In this video, she discusses Fred Rogers’ impact on early childhood learning as an opportunity to support relationship-based communities and Fred’s continuing influence on the next generation of educators.

That was Fred: unapologetically, fearlessly authentic. And I think that’s something helping the college students of today, to see that that’s possible, that he wasn’t some kind of super human. He was human like the rest of us and he struggled with a lot of these things just like they are but he stuck very much to what was inside of him, and that was this kind of radical kindness and the radical notion that every person is loved and capable of loving. That was what guided his work.

Watch the clip: