The goal of my AIE residency workshop is to invite students into the world of Jazz through historical accounts using music, creative writing, and dramatizations, while sharing key messages on the importance of good decision-making, dreaming the impossible dream, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  Available to conduct teacher workshops.

A little about me: I love people and have a passion and appreciation for the arts. I have worked with youth groups in varying capacities since 1997 and have developed a true appreciation for youth-led adult assisted activities. I have been known to use the named artistic talents to entertain, educate, and motivate youth both statewide and nationally. I am currently the Program Coordinator of statewide youth counter-marketing campaign called YES Team! The program has a membership of 3000+ youth statewide. My goal within the AIE program is to bring Jazz artists to life and to introduce the genre of jazz and infuse writing into the program as a way to cultivate both musical and written interest within youth.  For example, I may enter the classroom as Ms. Billie Holiday. I would then share her music and her life story.   Because of her up and down lifestyle, I'm able to discuss her positive and negative  lifestyle choices, dissect her music (lyrics), and the meaning, and then propose alternate choices that could have been made, and ask the youth to put on their thinking caps and actually re-write the life of Ms. Holiday, had she lived to tell her own story. Working with youth continues to be a rewarding experience. I have been singing professionally since 2000 and embrace Jazz as my musical genre of choice. I graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with my Masters in Professional and Technical Writing. I am currently writing two books on family and the secrets they share, and in the studio working on my second (jazz & soul ) and third (original) CD.  I serve on the Pulaski County Youth Advisory Board, and have worked with the Little Rock Writing Project on several occasions. Working with youth, making music, and writing are my passions.