UA Little Rock Alum Uses Closet of 300 Costumes to Inspire Students
A 2015 University of Arkansas at Little Rock alumnus was awarded the Educator Recognition Award by the Arkansans for Gifted and Talented Education (AGATE) in February.
April Blackburn, longtime K-12 GT teacher for East End School District in Bigelow, Ark., was recognized for her significant contributions to GT education.
Blackburn graduated in 2011 with a degree in education from the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). Freshly 22 with a diploma she was eager to put to use, East End School District offered her a position as GT teacher, which was the only position open at the time, under the premise that she would become certified as soon as possible.
While she didn’t quite realize all that being the district’s only GT teacher would entail, she was up for the task. Blackburn enrolled at UA Little Rock and began the Gifted and Talented Education Graduation Certificate process. By 2013, she only lacked three credits for her master’s; by 2015, she had completed her M.A. in Gifted and Talented Education, a degree she never imagined she’d one day have.
She credits Dr. Ann Robinson, a distinguished professor for the UA Little Rock School of Education, for much of her success from that period.
“There were times when I looked at her and admitted I didn’t know if I had what it takes to finish [the program],” Blackburn said. “And she said, ‘No, you can, and I need you to stay with it.’ She was such a mentor to me.”
All these years later, UA Little Rock is still part of her life.
“UA Little Rock never left me after I graduated,” she said. “Dr. Robinson checked in on me when I lost my grandparents, and I still talk to my old professors. The great thing about being an alumnus is that you’re never gone from UA Little Rock. They’re always proud to call you a Trojan.”
She and her husband were able to go to the university’s annual Taste of Little Rock April 7, which celebrates diverse culinary experiences from across the city.
“[The invitation] reminded me I’m still part of the family,” she said. “It means a lot to me how much the university cares about their alumni and invests in their success.”
Now 15 years into her tenure at East End School District, Blackburn went into her career hoping to create a safe environment that gives students the space to realize their potential.
“If I don’t teach, who will?” she said. “We’re struggling to get educators. We’re struggling to find the right people. And we’re losing teachers left and right for really valid reasons. I push forward through it because [my students] need me, and they’re going through much worse things than I am. I mean, I have kids who don’t even know what love is.”
It was the idea of putting a smile on even one of their faces that gave her the idea to start wearing costumes to school more than a decade ago. In 2015, Blackburn walked into her classroom on Halloween wearing a homemade replica of Ms. Frizzle’s iconic space outfit: a navy blue dress patterned with stars and planets, space shuttle shoes and Saturn drop earrings.
It became more than just a tradition. On National Popcorn Day, students know when they walk into school that she’ll be dressed up as a giant bag of popcorn. When National Bubble Gum Day comes around a month later, she’ll be dressed up as a bubble gum machine. Each “national day” brings its own costume and theme.
“I probably have more than 300 at this point,” she admitted. “Students who graduated years ago will come up to me in public and ask if I still wear them. I’ve had people beg me to count them, and everyone laughs when I tell them how small of a closet I actually have. Most of the costumes are all vacuum sealed, and some of them are in my attic. The inflatable ones are in the garage.”
If that’s not enough, she’s also earned the nickname “Grant Queen” at her school. During the 2025–26 school year alone, she secured 10 grants, including funding that allowed her middle school students to participate in several regional VEX Robotics competitions across Arkansas.
“I don’t want state funding to ever limit opportunities for my students,” she said. “I have four 3D printers in my classroom. I have class pets. I just hatched eggs in an incubator. There’s always something going on, and it makes the kids run to my door.”
And when she’s not waiting by the door to welcome her students in, she’s helping out with quiz bowl, or chess club, or National Honor Society, or the spelling bee, or Arkansans for Gifted and Talented Education (AGATE), where she sits on the board and as elections chair.
“I wear a lot of hats, literally and figuratively,” she said.
With the support of Callie Quiroz, principal and former librarian at Anne Watson Elementary School, Blackburn also created a makerspace lab—a space where students can go specifically to build and create.
Blackburn was raised in Conway by her grandmother, Clara, who was a third grade teacher at Ellen Smith Elementary School for 23 years before retiring to care for Blackburn and her siblings.
“Hearing the impact she had on students my whole life made me want to have a career where I could impact others,” Blackburn said. “Some of my kids get off the bus every morning and have come from awful situations. If wearing a crazy costume is going to make them feel like they can breathe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Her grandmother passed away from pneumonia in 2024, 7 days after the birth of Blackburn’s son William. Clara watched Blackburn win several education awards throughout her career, including the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Master’s and Specialist Award in November 2015 and the Act 56 Award from AGATE in 2018.
“I know my grandma is watching, and I want to show her that giving up her career for us wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “I’m going to make her proud until I retire, if I ever do. They might have to carry me out.”
Of all her career milestones, one stood out as the moment she realized she made it as an educator. Every April, Blackburn takes dozens of students on multi-day trips as part of her curriculum. She is always blown away by the impact these trips seem to have on her students, many of whom have never been out of state. But one conversation on a charter bus to the San Antonio SeaWorld Camp in 2015 changed her perspective entirely.
“It was the middle of the night, and I was walking up and down the bus to make sure everyone was okay, and one of the girls was looking out of the window. I stopped to ask her if she was okay, and she said, ‘We just crossed the Texas state line. Did you know that? I’ve never been out of the state before, Ms. Blackburn.’”
That little girl’s face in that moment, where it clicked that she could go places she’d never been before, is something Blackburn says she’ll never forget.
“She had a lot of hardship in her life: a mom in prison and a difficult upbringing being bounced from house to house. It reminded me that as horrible as the world can sometimes be, there are people who don’t have the opportunities we do, and bringing that kind of inspiration that comes with life experience is something that I don’t take for granted.”
It’s advice that Blackburn will pass on to her children: four-year-old Clara and now two-year-old William, named after each of her grandparents, whose spirits live on through the joy she brings to her classroom each day.
Written by Olivia Hicks