Inspiring Scientific Wonder through Children’s Show

April 21, 2025
• A Needham resident and NHS graduate earned a Children’s and Family Emmy Award for her work on an educational children’s show.

As an educational researcher, Jessica Young helps teachers and families fuel children’s natural curiosity in math and science. To spark that interest, Young looks toward the natural phenomena in the world around us, and toward the art of telenovelas.

Young and her colleagues at the Education Development Center pitched a television series aimed at capturing students’ passions for STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — and at shifting perceptions around what science careers could look like.

That show, “La Fuerza de Creer: Dulce Sazón,” earned a Children’s and Family Emmy Award last month in recognition of its public service. The series was also nominated for Outstanding Children’s or Family Viewing Series.

Telenovelas, popular Spanish programming similar to soap operas, provide an engaging storytelling format through which to address Spanish-speaking families, Young said. After screening the limited series to test audiences, the team successfully changed viewers’ beliefs and attitudes toward early STEM. One grandmother, after watching the show, remarked that she never thought about teaching girls about science until then.

Young, an executive producer of the show, said seeing that tangible, immediate impact was “awesome.”

“I think one of the things that really guided us was the idea that, in the US workforce, over 19% of folks are Latinos, but only 7% are in STEM fields,” Young said. “We really wanted to have positive impacts and positive role models for Latinos, and for them to be able to see their own children as interested in science and as potential scientists and envision science careers for their children.”

“La Fuerza de Creer: Dulce Sazón” follows a family struggling to keep their restaurant in business after their mom passes away. The narrative weaves in the science of cooking, gardening and music and combats gender stereotypes around science, Young said.

Their goal was to introduce everyday, informal science into children’s media diet through five, one-hour episodes, she said.

“[It’s] things like wondering about a water drop, or how light refracts and causes rainbows,” she said, “the whole gamut of being curious, asking questions and wondering about the world around you.”

While a student at Needham High School, Young took an early childhood education class, through which she volunteered with kids in the community, she said. She graduated in 1993 and studied biology and psychology at Boston College before earning her master’s in education from Harvard College.

Attending the award ceremony in Los Angeles, as Young described, was a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience.” The show has also earned an Anthem Award, a Communicator Award and Telly Award for social impact. It’s currently available on YouTube via Univision.

Accepting the award on behalf of the show, Executive Producer Michelle López said the show works “to make science come alive for the next generation of science leaders.”

“‘La Fuerza de Creer’ is more than a telenovela. It’s a love letter to our community, showing how science is already present in our Latino kitchens, in our sofritos, in our traditions and in our everyday bonding moments,” López said in her acceptance speech.

The Education Development Center researched and informed the scripts through an early science lens, Young said, while their literacy partners engaged with the EDC and conducted a series of workshops using the telenovela.

Children with a stronger math foundation before kindergarten perform better academically throughout their schooling than their peers, Young said, and those who learn more about science show stronger language and literacy outcomes.

“I started as a preschool teacher and an early childhood teacher, and so I always just thought that early childhood is so powerful, and the teachers and families who support their young children are so important,” she said. “That’s just always the lens that I’ve come with.”

For young mathematicians, games are an effective tool for learning, Young said, because they help show parents and kids that learning can be fun. That approach can deepen children’s “curiosity and persistence,” she added.

When children ask science questions, Young advises parents to slow down and investigate and observe the world alongside their kids. It’s about “seeing the world with a childlike lens.”

“Developing that love of science around you is really, really important,” she said, “especially when they’re little.”