For the last couple of years, I’ve been consulting on the new PBS Kids series SKILLSVILLE, an animation that encourages kids to “power up” the skills they need for success in future careers and everyday life!

In each episode, 8-year-old friends Cora, Dev, and Rae solve real-life problems using strategies learned from “Skillsville,” a video game designed by Cora’s mom, a game designer. The game allows players to manage their own virtual city, populated by tiny Beeples residents. By trying various careers, gamers keep the city running smoothly and find creative solutions to problems using life skills, including self-regulation and strategies for feeling, focusing, organizing, remembering, and thinking differently. With these tools, they overcome challenges, pursue goals, make mistakes, experiment, and persist.

Rae, who uses a wheelchair, relies on her adventurous spirit and swift action to handle challenges in “Skillsville”; she also learns that slowing down can be essential to thinking things through effectively.

Yes, in an anti-DEI violation, Skillsville features a disabled girl named Rae.

I love reading all the comments from those who are excited to see a wheelchair character, a rarity in the media. Disability isn’t a DEI checkbox, it’s real life for 70 million Americans, and over a billion worldwide. While showing diverse perspectives has been given a label of “DEI”, thus vilified as scary, all we’re really saying is what we don’t see, we are ignorant to and can’t understand. The objective is to show all perspectives of life, because for a long time, there was no diverse representation despite a diverse population. As an Asian adoptee who grew up in the Midwest, I saw one viewpoint as a kid and it misinformed me. But we can do better, because there’s nothing wrong with opening one’s perspective to all that actually exists in the world. Diversity isn’t scary but small minds are.

Check out Skillsville at: https://pbskids.org/videos/skillsville

And share!

Skillsville Instagram @ https://instagram.com/kamredlawsk