Kathie Guild

Kathie Guild was raised in south Georgia. She married an U.S. Army Officer and moved over eighteen times in twenty years across the United States and overseas. Kathie began her career in education as a pre -school and elementary school teacher. While living in Germany, Kathie was introduced to puppets and the magical world of puppet theater. She worked as an elementary school counselor in Germany for the Department of Defense Dependents Schools and used puppets in her classroom guidance presentations. During the Gulf War, Kathie used the puppets as a way to help the dependent children of military parents deal and cope with the deployment of their parents and the uncertainty of war. It was in Germany Kathie wrote her first puppet curriculum, Froggy and Friends, based around her central character Froggy, a German Steiff hand puppet. Kathie was the recipient of the Department of Defense Meritorious Service Award for Exemplary Service for her work with students during the Gulf War. Froggy continued to play the lead role in subsequent puppet curriculums and two more works followed, Froggy and Friends 11 and More Froggy and Friends. In Germany, Kathie acquired a large assortment of puppets with distinct personalities along with several puppet theaters that returned with her to the United States. Kathie attributes the years she lived in Germany as instrumental in shaping her philosophy on guidance activities for children utilizing puppets.

Kathie has written additional classroom counseling curricula for upper elementary-aged students in grades 3-5. These titles are Everyone’s Included, How Not To Pop, Just Say It and the ABCs of CBT. The classroom counseling curricula for the older students utilizes group games, magic tricks, optical illusions, and role plays to teach life lessons.

“I think elementary counselors have a similar job description as Disney’s Imagineers. If you can get students to think it then you can get students to achieve it. The more creative we are as educators the more creative the students become.”

Kathie currently lives and works in North Carolina with her husband, daughter, pets, and numerous puppets. She presents teaching with puppetry workshops and is a Nationally Certified School Counselor ( NBCT). Currently, Kathie is serving as the Executive Director of Puppet Show Incorporated a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization promoting and preserving puppetry arts to children. https://www.puppetshowinc.org/