Pam Gittleman knows that young children love to listen to music, make music, and move their bodies to music, but she also knows that doing so plays an essential role in their development. A long-time early childhood music educator and curriculum developer, the 2020 Advanced Leadership Initiative Partner has encouraged thousands of young children to make music together using songs that range from traditional nursery rhymes to contemporary classics. Using the knowledge and connections she gleaned at ALI, she was inspired to create an updated collection of nursery rhymes that relate more closely to the lives and values of today’s families – and impart lasting lessons for a kinder, more connected world.

Children’s music was a second career for Gittleman. A Wharton MBA, she left a position as a VP account manager at Ogilvy and Mather, reinventing herself as an early childhood music teacher. Always musical, she educated herself for the position, reading up on how music could be used to create interactive lessons incorporating songs and stories that were age-appropriate and relevant for young children. Although she took required professional development classes throughout her 20-year career, Gittleman felt a lack of experience in an education-specific class.  

When her husband, Jeffrey Gittleman, was accepted as an Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow in 2020, she saw an opportunity and decided to apply to the program as well, eager to audit classes at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). What she learned about early childhood social and emotional learning (SEL), language acquisition, and overall growth and development from ages 0-5 “validated a lot of what I did on instinct,” she said. “What was new to me was understanding how the brain matures to process language and music, and that provided a broader foundation for understanding the role of stories and music in child development,” she said. She also learned how supporting skill development with intention, and an understanding of the potential for positive impact, could be a powerful motivator for parents and teachers alike.

Her time at ALI crystalized her growing impression that there might be an opportunity to address the fact that many traditional nursery rhymes were “outdated, dark, inappropriate and, in some cases, downright cringeworthy.”  For example, “Three Blind Mice” have their tails cut off with a carving knife, while “Rock-a-Bye Baby” concludes with the baby falling from a tree, “cradle and all.” Working with teachers like Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, an adjunct lecturer at HGSE, whose class specialized in designing for social and emotional learning (SEL), Gittleman began to rewrite these rhymes to emphasize kindness, empathy, and gratitude and paired them with research-based tools (an emoji mood chart and guiding questions to facilitate conversations) to create Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times™ 

“Being in the [ALI] program motivated me,” she recalled. Working with professors and teaching assistants throughout HGSE, Gittleman was able to iterate and test the rhymes paired with SEL tools in an underserved preschool. That test yielded strong, positive impacts on the children, teachers, and families involved so she felt she had the “proof of concept” needed to move the project forward.

The resulting collection of rhymes has led to an album, Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times created with children’s music star Raffi and singer/songwriter Lindsay Munroe who put their own magical, musical spin on Gittleman’s updated rhymes. The new “Rock-a-Bye Baby” is visited by caring siblings who check on the baby and make sure the cradle does not fall. “Three Kind Mice” celebrates the little creatures’ cooperation as they work together to get some cheese. Along with the album, ForKinderTimes.com offers tools that allow teachers and parents to reach out to children, including those who may lack language skills, to explore emotions and lessons embedded in these catchy, familiar rhymes and songs. The website also includes educational videos and resources for parents, teachers, and caregivers to enjoy with the young children they love and care for.

The album is currently available on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon music services, where songs from the album have already been streamed more than 1.2 million times. Next up, says Gittleman, is a book to include the rhymes and SEL/language/literacy resources as another step in her long-held goal to make early childhood education more equitable. She is hoping to partner with a foundation to provide free books to those in under-resourced communities. “Quality early childhood education is elusive for many, particularly for underserved families who do not have the knowledge and/or socioeconomic capital to access programs built on evidence-based early childhood practices,” she said. “These fun, memorable rhymes, songs, and resources can help lay the foundation of emotional intelligence that is necessary for long term social and academic success, while nurturing the kindness, empathy and gratitude to fuel a society built on strong, respectful, caring relationships.”