It’s a sunny afternoon in Cleveland’s St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, but Pixel Planet Studios is dark. Shelves of tools and production equipment seem to cave in around Juliana Allchin, the face of Cleveland’s newest children’s YouTube show, Ms. Julie’s World. But when the spotlights flicker on, she’s the only thing in the room that matters.
Alongside Anthony Carabotta, the show’s video director and a co-founder of Pixel Planet Studios, Allchin is filming a music video for a salsa-inspired ABCs song. Her flowy red skirt pops against the green screen, which later becomes colorful visuals pioneered by the studio’s motion designer, Brandon Dohner, and animator, Eric Anderle. Allchin lip-syncs a track she produced alongside Mike Brown at Lava Room Studios in Independence.
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“‘A’ is for alligator,” she sings, clapping her arms together. “‘B’ is for ball,” she proceeds, as Carabotta throws her a soccer ball from behind the camera.
“‘F’ is for floss” has Allchin breaking out in a hip-shaking dance popularized by the Fortnite video game. She’s nearly unstoppable, until she misses her cue at ‘Q.’ For “queen.” She’s only flustered for a moment.
From the top, it’s seamless, until ‘Q’ strikes again.
Third time’s a charm. They make it to ‘Z.’ But Carabotta can tell Allchin isn’t satisfied.
“You want to do ‘queen’ again?” he asks, practically reading her mind.
Carabotta is gracious with retakes, and Allchin thanks him every time. They’re gentle on one another because they’re parents first; this is just a passion project.
While other successful children’s shows exist on YouTube, like Ms. Rachel and the Cleveland-based It’s CeCe TV, Ms. Julie’s World is unique. Carabotta describes a variety show vibe, reminiscent of what the team of 30-somethings watched as teenagers. He settles on the word “weird,” which somehow works for the show’s older audience, primarily kindergarten and first grade.
“Kindergarten today is challenging,” Allchin says. “Kids are expected to almost know how to read. That’s just not the reality in America. So I want this show to set kids off on the best possible footing.”
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It’s not about numbers, but those have skyrocketed since the show’s debut in early June: over 1,500 subscribers and more than 60,000 views on the show’s first episode.
Before becoming Ms. Julie, Allchin obtained a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from Cleveland State University, where she briefly taught as an education professor. She was also a Cleveland Metropolitan School District kindergarten teacher in Old Brooklyn. Almost two years of that tenure were spent teaching behind a screen during the pandemic. That’s when she harnessed the ability to make distance learning engaging for kids’ waning attention spans.
“I thought about Dora the Explorer, for example,” Allchin recalls. “Every activity we did had some little jingle that went with it.”
Now, her teaching days are behind her, but an afternoon on set feels reminiscent of a day in the classroom.
“Artistically, it’s similar to real teaching in terms of creating the curriculum,” she says. “I still think about Ohio Learning Standards for everything I do, even if the scene isn’t academic.”
Her cadence and energy don’t disband when the camera cuts. She changes into a Brazil soccer uniform, where she lived for a year after high school and where much of her family is from. Now, “‘B’ is for ball” is brought to life — costume, prop and all.
Everyone hums along to the ABCs tune. Allchin’s songs are catchy by design. The former solo artist picked up her skills in a musically inclined family while being raised on Cleveland’s East Side.
“My earliest memory of writing a song was in kindergarten,” she says. “It was a song I wrote while visiting my family in Brazil about a homeless child we walked past who lived in a box. She had a scar on her face. I still remember how it affected me. I went home and wrote a song in the bathroom. When I opened the door, my dad was standing there with tears in his eyes and said, ‘You’re a songwriter.’”
Writing songs also helped her bridge the gap of being an English learner from a bilingual household. The sentiment carried through her career as she incorporated both Spanish and English strategies while teaching at school. Ms. Julie now does the same.
“I found music was this wonderful equilibrium for everyone, regardless of whether they’re an English language learner, a typical student or neurodivergent,” she says. “It allowed the students to connect with the curriculum on a social level.”
“I’m not trying to create children’s music,” she adds. “I’m trying to create music that I would want to listen to.”
With one more clothing swap, Allchin now dons Ms. Julie’s patchwork overalls to film clips for the show’s next long-form episode. She walks through a world of colors for a lesson on ROYGBIV: red butterflies, yellow bananas, green snakes. Then, she’s anchoring a news segment on baby sloths. Did you know they’re nocturnal?
Between takes, she sidebars about a character on the show named Lumi, an owl based on her 2-year-old daughter that shares many of her childlike catchphrases. Inspiration for Ms. Julie’s World began when Allchin’s daughter was born, and she’s still playing a major role.
“She really ignites my creativity,” Allchin says.
It’s helped Allchin learn a thing or two herself. After one questionable take, a quick fact-check reveals that elephants are pregnant for 2 years, not 3. She integrates it into the skit.
“Those poor mamas,” she sympathizes on camera.
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Much of her script is improvised. No teleprompter or papers taped to the wall. She says her lines as she feels them in the moment.
One of the last segments filmed for the day is Allchin swinging her arms across her body one at a time, like an elephant trunk. She invites the kids to do the same. Between elephant noises, she remarks that the repeated movement activates the brain and helps retain learning. It’s not a lesson you’d pick up from Dora the Explorer; it’s a lens into a new mode of teaching that Ms. Julie is nurturing.
“When I watch the show with other children, they really will respond to the show,” Allchin says. “My hope is, your kid is watching it, they’re moving, and they’re excited to learn. And at the end, they’re like, ‘These are my favorite songs. I like this dance.’ It’s a different kind of TV experience.”
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