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Vonnya Pettigrew
//May 9, 2023
Vonnya Pettigrew
CEO
Root Branch Media Group
What is your most significant accomplishment?
My most significant accomplishment occurred at the onset of the COVID 19 global pandemic in April 2020. When Gov. Larry Hogan announced that schools would be closed and that students were required to remain home for two weeks, extending to a month, then to spring break and then to the end of the school year … well you get the picture. My instincts as a thought leader kicked in and together with one of our clients/youth partnering organization, Young Audiences of Maryland, we decided to create and produce a 30-minute pilot episode of a children’s television show entitled “Arts and Learning Kids.”
The show uses a teaching method called Arts Integration to pair a Teaching Artist with a Certified Teacher to teach students complex concepts in math, English language arts, science and social studies. We pitched our pilot to the CEO of Baltimore Public Schools and she loved it. We immediately received funding to produce the show. From April-August 2020 we produced 105 30-minute episodes of ALK for city school students in Pre-K to fifth grade.
This was significant because when the pandemic hit, we as a city and as a school district weren’t prepared for our students to work virtually from home. Families did not own computers or internet. Our production of Arts and Learning Kids solved an immediate problem quickly by minimizing the loss in learning.
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This is an honoree profile from The Daily Record's Top 100 Women awards. Information for this profile was sourced from the honoree's application for the award. |
