The Chicago Teachers' Center, currently reorganized as the Center for College Access and Success (CCAS) is an outpost of Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). It is a grant magnet to establish and maintain partnerships between the university and K-12 public schools. CCAS services include college readiness, tutoring and mentoring, arts integration, and curriculum development. Currently CCAS serves 86 Chicago public schools from low-income, minority and immigrant communities.I retired from full-time service with CCAS in July of 2015 but continue as a part-time consultant. During my 29 years there, I held multiple positions, including High School Site Liaison, Designer of Computer-Related Programs, IT, and, most recently, Program Developer in Film Education and Visual Learning.My school-based and student-based projects were with students at the high school and middle school levels. As a team member, I helped plan, launch and teach for a Summer Film Institute for high school students, providing an immersion experience in film production as well as exposure to higher education environments at NEIU's college campus. I also developed and taught units at Chicago Public Schools including: film productions as part of the school's 7th and 8th grade Human Rights unit; and applying film appreciation to narrative comprehension in a high school Freshman English class.Based on observations in these projects, I developed theories of visual comprehension, thinking and expression. Supplementing field expertise with national and international research, I designed curricula; authored and published articles—including the Fine Arts Journal for the Alberta Teachers' Association; produced papers and presented at conferences—including the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships (NCCEP) in San Francisco and the International Technology, Education and Development conference (INTED) in Valencia, Spain.Writing samples and student films provided by request.

During my tenure at the Chicago Teachers' Center (CTC)—currently the Center for College Access and Success and a division of Northeastern Illinois University—I developed custom applications for data entry, reporting and analysis. These solutions included: attendance and service tracking; after-school program creation, recruitment, and progress analysis/reporting; teacher workshop registration; and conference scheduling.The platform for application design is Filemaker Pro. In addition to tables and entity relationship creation, I specialize in simple (at the user end) and elegant user interfaces. As part of my training I've attended the Filemaker Developers Conference and currently attend regular meetings of the Chicago Area Filemaker Developers Association (CAFDA), hosted by Soliant, Inc., a leading Filemaker consultant agency.Recently retired from CTC, I am interested in establishing a part-time consultancy to commercial businesses and non-profit agencies for developing custom applications using Filemaker to meet organizational needs. While Filemaker is designed primarily for large, data-driven applications, creative uses of the platform can be conceived for specific tools that would not be considered databases. Examples might include language translation apps, recipe finders, music charts, recordings and setlists, actors' line learning, and much more.

I play a wide range of styles and am available for this work on a moment's notice. I have performed as a singer-songwriter—both solo and with guest musicians; a band member (a jug band); at contra and square dances; and at farmers' markets. I also play for private parties and house concerts, as well as private and public functions. Among the venues or clients for whom I have performed are Uncommon Ground, the Old Town School of Folk Music, the Mariott Foundation, Schubas Tavern, Brookdale Senior Center, and Veterans of Illinois. I can make myself available to back up artists as a studio session player, particularly with piano or keyboard, and as a composer/arranger.My instruments are guitar, piano and keyboard, and customized washboard. Performance and composition samples provided by request.

If you have any channels for giving exposure to "new" writers, are interested in a very good writer and would be willing to get to know my work through samples or simple assignments rather than professional resumé, I believe it would be worth your time to see what I can do. I am basically unpublished but have been writing most of my life for my own pleasure. Since I landed a full-time job that lasted me 29 years and was active in music and other endeavors, I chose to pursue my writing as a personal rather than professional endeavor.I have written short stories, poetry, and essays on social or cultural topics. Fictional themes for finished works or sketches include: thwarted grief and paranoia in a surveillance society; the inner conflicts of a woman finding sexual passion and chemistry through intellectual exchange; struggles with bi-polarity and its overlap with Greek mythology, indigenous spirituality, and political upheaval; a fictional pseudo-scholarly exposition of newfound testimony shedding light on the back stories of characters from Shakespeare's "The Tempest"; an adult-oriented recasting of Pinocchio in which the puppet achieves manhood and a new relationship with his father and maker, told from the point of view of the father who is subject to hallucinations. While some are completed works, the sketches are brief outlines of larger works with several pages of complete text through which themes were discovered and style was established.Essay topics are wide-ranging and include: film critiques; analyses of and commentary on current cultural/political issues; and struggles with emotional disorders.Writing samples available on request, though a phone conversation would be pre-requisite.

I am interested in making or participating in independent film projects. I was trained at Columbia College prior to digital or video media and have recently retrained in current technologies and techniques. Actually, my early experience fostered a rigorous discipline as changes, that currently require a drag of a mouse, then involved days of wait time and hundreds of dollars so you had to make your decisions carefully. Basic facility with composition and sequence have hardly changed since then, except in aesthetic developments.My most recent work has been with students in Chicago Public Schools. As a result, my proficiency is more on the artistic end than on technical quality and so I prefer artistic collaboration or consultancy. Recently retired from a full-time job of 29 years, I am rekindling an old love and am interested in original, creative works that serve artistic, personal, entertainment, community or social interests.If I create my own small-scale, low-budget pieces, I'd seek help in identifying venues, grants, and so on. I also would seek individuals experienced in camera operating and location audio recording.I'd also be interested in hooking up with advanced, professional or semi-professional, likeminded people in labors of love or interesting assignments. At this stage, I'd not offer myself as an on-location equipment operator. I have a strong sense of composition and could work creatively with a proficient camera operator. I have strong skills in editing and have clocked many hours with Final Cut Express, an only slightly limited version of the original Pro when it was an industry standard, as opposed to the current consumer version which is more on the level of iMovie. If I were to continue in this vein, I would train myself in Premiere. I am NOT trying to break into the industry, or climb a ladder in a highly demanding and competitive professional field. I'm interested in working part-time. I have no funds to invest in or budget a project.