St. Louis kids have been singing about their “big feelings” with Laren Loveless for years. Soon, families who have never stepped foot in a Music & Me class will be able to sing along, too.
Laren and Aimee Loveless, the husband-and-wife educators behind St. Louis’ Music & Me, have filmed four original musical segments for Teaching in Room 9, Nine PBS’ educational program for young learners.
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The songs use music to introduce children to social-emotional concepts such as recognizing strong emotions, calming their bodies, staying curious, and developing a sense of belonging.
For Laren, who grew up inspired by public television and Fred Rogers, the opportunity felt a little surreal. “I was just honored because my heroes are these people that are the creators of Muppets and the creator of Daniel Tiger,” he says. “I would be lying if I didn’t dream that this is what I wanted to happen.”
The collaboration also comes at a significant moment for children’s programming at Nine PBS. On October 1, the station announced that it had been selected through a nationwide competition to receive more than $11 million in the first year of a five-year federal Ready To Learn grant cycle focused on improving early literacy.
From Francis Park to PBS
When St. Louis Magazine first visited Music & Me in 2025, the Lovelesses were spreading picnic blankets, or “musical islands,” around Francis Park while toddlers picked up wooden instruments, ribbons, and shakers.
The parents of three launched Music & Me in 2022 after careers in education. Laren taught at City Academy for 10 years, and Aimee spent 15 years teaching in the Mehlville School District. Their classes eventually began drawing families from more than 50 ZIP codes.
The program has continued to grow beyond its original Francis Park classes. Music & Me now offers classes at The Lodge Des Peres, along with pop-up programs at The Magic House and Schlafly Bottleworks. From the beginning, the goal extended beyond teaching music. Classes combine songs, movement, puppetry, and play with conversations about emotions. Laren’s original songs tackle sadness, frustration, self-regulation, curiosity, and belonging.
“Big Feelings,” in particular, has followed families home. Parents have told Laren about children using the song’s calming techniques at school drop-off or during difficult moments outside class.
“I’ve always wanted to expand as far as it’ll take,” Laren says. “How many children can I reach that need to be reminded they matter and their feelings matter?”
How Music & Me landed on Teaching in Room 9
There’s a particularly “St. Louis is a small town” twist to how the collaboration began.
After SLM profiled Music & Me last year, Nine PBS president and CEO Amy Shaw saw the article and took notice of the Lovelesses’ work. Representatives from Nine PBS later attended one of their classes, eventually leading to conversations about bringing Laren’s songs to Teaching in Room 9.
Laren’s role on the show focuses on social-emotional learning rather than music instruction, but music is what sets his segments apart. They mark a first for Teaching in Room 9: original music created specifically for the program.
And those songs could reach kids beyond their living rooms. Teaching in Room 9 is listed as an educational resource by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and its lessons are designed around state learning standards, making the program a resource educators can use in the classroom.
Getting Music & Me onto those screens, however, required Laren to rethink how he connects with kids. His classes aren’t designed for children to sit quietly and watch him perform. Kids move, play instruments, interact with puppets, answer questions, and participate alongside their caregivers.
So when it came time to film, Laren tried to forget about the potentially much larger audience and imagine just one child on the other side of the camera. “I had to picture myself talking to either myself as a child or one child,” he says.
He also didn’t want television to mean competing for that child’s attention with constant noise or stimulation. “I didn’t want it to be like, I’m gonna have a flashing light right here the whole time to keep your attention,” he says. “I wanted it to feel slow.”
That meant asking a question and leaving enough space for a child watching at home to actually answer, an approach that Aimee compares to the intentional pacing families may recognize from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.
Four songs for big feelings and little learners
Laren initially filmed four original songs for his first Teaching in Room 9 segments, each adapted into roughly 60- to 90-second clips.
“Big Feelings” gives children ways to recognize and respond to strong emotions, while “Breathe In, Breathe Out” introduces breathing as a tool to use during frustrating moments. “Learning Me, Learning You” centers on curiosity and continuing to learn about ourselves and others. “You Are Very Special” reinforces the idea that children belong.
For Aimee, bringing those lessons to television matters in part because many parents weren’t given the same language for emotions when they were children. She remembers adults quickly reassuring an upset child with “you’re fine” or questioning why the child was sad rather than simply allowing them to experience the feeling.
“It’s really cool that we get to show kids that they can feel all their feelings,” she says, “because sometimes we didn’t get to.”
And parents watching alongside their children might pick up some new emotional vocabulary, too, she adds.
Nine PBS lands major early-learning grant
The Music & Me collaboration was already underway when Nine PBS announced another major development in its children’s educational work.
The station was selected through a nationwide competition to receive more than $11 million in the first year of a five-year Ready To Learn grant cycle, administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education. Nine PBS estimates the federal funding will total approximately $56 million over five years.
The funding will support the Everyday Literacy Alliance, a national initiative led by Nine PBS aimed at strengthening literacy outcomes for children ages 2–8 through evidence-based media, family engagement, and community learning.
For the Lovelesses, that national focus could give the work they’ve started locally a much larger audience.
“What makes this especially exciting for us is that the grant will allow the work happening through Teaching in Room 9, including the music and original songs we’ve been creating for the program, to have the opportunity to reach children and families on a national level, rather than only here in St. Louis,” Aimee says.
How families can watch
The Lovelesses’ first Teaching in Room 9 segments do not yet have a confirmed premiere date, but families will have several ways to find them once they’re released.
The couple says the segments will air through Nine PBS and later be available through the PBS KIDS app and PBS’ YouTube channel, making the songs accessible to families and educators beyond St. Louis.
The Lovelesses are also discussing the possibility of creating more content for Teaching in Room 9‘s next season, potentially including new original songs developed specifically for the program, although future filming plans have not yet been finalized.
Their in-person Music & Me classes aren’t going anywhere. But Aimee says the PBS opportunity has changed what the couple imagines the program could become. “I think our classes are always going to be our staple,” she says. “But I do think PBS, and maybe beyond that, is something where we could also really grow. I think this is just kind of the beginning of that.”
For Laren, the opportunity brings him back to the children’s television that helped shape him. “I wish I would have had more of that in my own childhood,” he says. “And then when I found it, it was PBS. To do that for other children is a dream come true.”
