G.W. Carver High School's Roshunda Jones-Koumba will take the stage at Radio City Music Hall as the winner of the Excellence In Theater Education Award
Raised in Wharton, about an hour southwest of Houston, Jones-Koumba hails from a family of educators. Although she grew up loving theater, she planned to become an English teacher until her second semester at Prairie View A&M University, when a professor asked her “why don't you just teach something you absolutely love to do?” The light bulb went on and she switched majors to theater.
“One of the things I think really works is that we have a sense of a family, and it’s a place of belonging, and that the area that we create is a safe space,” Jones-Koumba explains. “So by having that safe space, it's allowed kids to be creative and think outside of the box, and they really buy into the vision and help build the legacy.”
Their teacher is on something of a roll, already winning the Stephen Schwartz Musical Theater Teacher of the Year Award and International Thespian Society Inspirational Theatre Educator Award last year to go with a 2020 induction into the Texas Thespians Hall of Fame. Besides a trip to the Tonys and the subsequent gala, her new prize also includes $10,000 to put toward Carver’s theater program and a visiting master class taught by Carnegie Mellon drama professors.