So 11,000 pounds that we've been going is good.

It's good.

What you've been doing this week in a lot of ways, Charles Bullard is a typical high school kid.

He likes to joke around with his sister and his neighbors.

That was a man from Dallas.

I think that's the best for you.

Yeah, because we get quarterback Grant.

Oh, Bennett, don't scare me.

He loves getting into virtual basketball battles with his best buddy so far.

What you expect?

I mean, come on.

This team sucks.

When I say suck, I mean Dallas Cowboys.

And he likes to challenge himself physically.

He's a sophomore at Putnam City North, possibly a future starter at defensive tackle for the Panthers.

So he tends to spend a lot of time in the weight room getting ready for the next season.

I still work hard because I really I start in this year.

I just to keep working hard and hopefully I'll be able to start.

The future possibilities are limitless.

And like the sign in the weight room says you just have to believe.

But there is something else about Charles that is nothing like your typical high school kid.

It's not the life more than meets his voice and how he uses his unmade bed.

Charles is incredible music teacher Billy Lewis has been giving Charles private singing lessons for three years now.

He's singing Italian.

He sings.

We're going to be doing in Germany next year for contests.

He loves the classical, von he loves, spirituals, but he loves to sing Mozart.

La street.

Oh.

Charles doesn't speak Italian and has never had Italian classes, but he understands what the song is saying.

The guy in the song is trying to get a girl to basically come to his house, you know, to spend time with her.

And she's like, I don't know, my parents might not like him or, you know, my parents want to like you.

My parents is the song is basically he wants her to come over and she doesn't know.

And I think she ends up like sneaking out at the end of it.

You know, because she ends up joining him and I end up going out, you know?

Italian style.

He has been a phenomenal student for me.

It's not often that a student can take criticism in the way that Charles does.

I mean, I just unload on him and he just says, okay, what else can I do?

What else can I do to make it better?

He's just a very special young man, not only as far as talent, but as being, just a moral, polite.

Everything is.

Yes, ma'am.

No, ma'am.

He he's just incredible.

I love him, he's like my son.

I can say without her and my mom, I wouldn't really be anywhere because my mom is pushing me to practice and get this right and do this correct.

And Miss Lewis is the one.

Give me the music.

Let's sing over it.

Let's make sure this is right.

So with them together, they've really formed me into the person that my mom wants me to be instead of the person my father thought I would become.

Charles is growing up in a tough neighborhood.

Crowds aren’t attracted by stage spotlights, but by the flashing red and blue of police cruisers answering the latest calls for help.

This was Charles world.

Before I had music, and knowing I have the talent.

I was always outside doing stuff I didn't have any business doing.

Stealing and fighting and all the stuff that wouldn't end up lying to me in jail.

He doesn't have to worry about that now.

He's too busy practicing for concert, spending time in his room working on songs instead of outside being tempted by trouble.

That's just exactly the way his mom likes him.

Boys his age is out doing, you know God knows what.

Out smoking and drinking.

And I mean, and this keeps him busy.

He enjoys it.

He loves singing.

So yeah, it has he he's developed into a good, good young man, you know, responsible.

Well young man Charles can sing about anything.

But his favorites are the operas he sings with Billy Louis and the spirituals his mom loves to hear, to carry me home.

I love Swing Low because of.

Reminds me of my grandfather.

He passed away in 96, I believe, and he always told me that how much he liked that song and he always played it when I went over his house.

And with me, having the opportunity to sing that solo brought back memories of my grandfather.

So I said, I'm just going to sing this the best way possible.

And I know as I was singing, all I could think about was my grandpa sitting right beside me playing the piano, and it made me feel really good.

I knew what made him happy.

The first time I met Charles, I was really amazed at, the voice that was inside this young man, because it sounded like somebody much older.

And so first off, I was impressed with his voice.

It was after the months passed by and I got to know him that I was more and more impressed with Charles.

As a person, we are privileged to have somebody with us who is truly a fine musician, and she's a very versatile musician.

She teaches music theory at UCO.

Jan Halsey has taught choral music for more than 25 years.

Charles is in her class at Putnam City North High School, though today she will turn her students over to college.

Professor Sandra Thompson Thompson will add a different touch to the choir's performance for state contest.

Fresh ears to listen and then find tune.

Guys focus one and a two and a three.

And, I don't only do it because they learn something, I also do it because I learned something.

And I really hope that I'm modeling the fact that learning is a lifelong pursuit, that you're always learning something throughout your whole life, especially a musician.

There's always something that you can do just a little bit better.

That's how Charles approaches his life now, not just his singing.

As a sophomore, he made the National Honor Choir, one of only a handful of sophomores from around the country to achieve the honor, and the first at that age, to make the list from PC North.

But Jan Hulsey has a talented group of singers she's shepherding around.

I think we could easily be a performing arts high school.

That's probably not going to happen.

That's not the focus and the direction of our disc district, but we easily could be that.

And, the talent here in my last 12 years at North has just been phenomenal.

I keep thinking that it's going to run out, but it never does.

Okay, now that if I, okay, do this because they're not going to come in loud enough, so you have to decrescendo on faith.

Oh, the talent level just keeps going higher.

And now this sophomore with the big voice could be the best of them all.

Not even Charles mother can quite believe it.

I mean, I just it's it's amazing.

I can't believe that, you know, he can just he can sing that good.

And I wouldn't have never known it.

And I, I'm just amazed he's like like a grown man singing.

So, he is so eager to be the best at what he does because he, he has a goal in mind.

He has big goals in mind.

He sees a future out there for himself.

Perhaps in a larger venue than here in Oklahoma.

And, so he's willing to do whatever it takes, work as hard as he has to work and try whatever I ask him to do, or his private teacher asks him to do.

Some words home.

And so Charles Bullard sings toward the heavens and praises his Lord for the ability to do so.

Finally I got on my knees and I started praying to God because I was always looking for a talent.

So I could carry on.

And I just told the Lord, thank you very much for what you've done for me, because I'm about to use this for the rest of my life, and I can only tell that I just want to get better as time progresses.

I want to become better at what I do.

Whether in the choir room or the weight room down the hall, Charles keeps pushing.

Because maybe, just maybe, Charles knows better than anyone else that you just have to believe.

Three, two, one this one.

With no time.

No, not.

No time.

Got something to do?

Let's do it.

Scribble it, scribble it, scribble it right now.

Words are important.

Even in an art class.

In fact, in this art class, the words printed on signs displayed around the classroom may be more important than the lines students are connecting on their papers.

I use a lot of questions with students, because I want them to be able to think about what they're doing, and so one of the reasons I have a lot of words is to help them think.

The students at Marshall Greenwood's advanced art class at Oklahoma City's Cleveland Elementary School don't look at art as a diversion from what some perceive as more difficult courses like mathematics.

For many of these kids, art could become a career, and it's already helping them with the so-called more difficult subjects.

It certainly makes them better students because they learn to be much better problem solvers, and they learn how to, manipulate objects and they learn how to think, three dimensionally.

They learn how to, think about something.

How am I going to get from A to Z in a way that they're not allowed to do in many other subjects?

One of her star students in the class is the 11 year old fifth grader Leah Lopez.

One of her works of art, a special contest winner, has been on display at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

It's a landscape.

It's kind of like a landscape collage, I should say, as you miss things.

Leah has been an outstanding student for me for a long time.

She's had work that's been shown, outside of the school, and she's just one of those students who had a natural ability to draw, to be able to see clearly.

The thing I like about art is because you don't have to do a certain way, anything.

You can, do it anywhere.

I like abstract and stuff, and this is fun to experiment with.

This stuff.

Come on, let's go.

Leah's creativity isn't limited to the visual arts.

First of all, she and her mom have to be pretty creative.

Just working out her schedule.

She's involved in a different activity every day or evening of the week.

The day.

At the top of the list, though, is making sure all her homework is done.

Despite her busy schedule, Leah is able to maintain a high grade point average in school.

She's responsible.

I have to admit, I don't have to tell her.

Did you do your homework?

Did you do this because, she's a levelheaded kid.

Two.

Three.

Four.

One of Leah's weekly highlights comes every Wednesday evening when she and her grandfather entertain the diners at Enrique's Mexican restaurant in Edmond.

They play classic tunes with an appropriate Mexican flavor in music, it seems, is something that just runs in the family.

Ever since I was little, I remember my dad taking his guitar to go play a book, and I was probably seven six.

He's always been playing ever since forever, so that was just normal again.

I like it's fun because me and my grandpa get to spend time with each other, and we talk and we make jokes and just see.

Now the people there, people that you don't recognize, we still say hi and stuff.

It's cool.

A lot of the people are really nice that they talk to you and, they're the owner, Enrique.

He comes and always talks to us, and they bring us drinks so he won't get tired, and they have chairs up there, so it's nice up there.

Right now, Leah's passions are divided between her arts and her music.

But what could win out in the future is her strong desire to use her guitar as an instrument of healing.

You have a person that's sick or whatever, and, you help them take them on the it their mind off everything and it helps.

And soon soothes them.

And you can, all kinds of help, like people who does have something wrong with their hands or anything, a guitarI will help them by stretching out their hands and stuff.

She's only 11 years old, but Leah is already thinking well into the future about how her talents could help heal someone else's pain.

I guess we're blessed, to be honest.

Yeah.

We're blessed, aren't we?

Yeah good kids.

I can tell you that before we start to start, like too many kids these days, consider school to be just a drag, something that keeps them from doing the things they really enjoy.

And then there are students like the ones Valerie Causey has in her art class at Tulsa's Lindbergh Elementary.

These are the most talented kids I've ever worked with.

They are just fabulous.

From kindergarten through fifth, I have kindergartners who can compose their own songs.

They all love coming to school, but perhaps none more so than nine year old Adrianna Cole.

Yeah, I like school.

Like on spring breaks.

They live for some reason.

Like, I just been dying to get out of school cause I kind of tiring that one spring break, so I'm, like, ready to go back to school.

I'm ready to go to school.

And then I just do my best and what I can do.

Be sure that you get every single petal outline with the colors that you want.

Then you can decide what colors that you're going to color it in with.

Her best has always been better than most.

Okay, well, my grades are straight A's and haven't gotten no S, no C, no D and no B and favorite subjects.

I like what I can't think of a favorite subject is because I like all of them, but she has a particular passion for the arts.

She's extremely interested and she grasps concepts so quickly, and she is one that will just sit there and work on something and work on something.

Even though it's lengthy, she has the patience to just sit there and work on it until she gets it completely done.

And when she's finished, you just stand back and go, oh my gosh, a fourth grader did this.

This is just incredible.

But she's very interested in it.

She loves it.

So drawing and painting represent only a small portion of Adriana's creative endeavors.

She leads a nonstop on the go life.

Everything Adriana has going for her staff is a God given talent and she is just a gifted child.

She hasn't had any training in anything.

Bye Yet when she gets home from school, this fourth grader does her homework, then sits down and starts writing songs.

And one thing that she really have amazed me with is the writing.

Writing the songs and putting her own tune to the songs and learning them.

That's one thing that she really had because she got a whole book of them.

God is letting me.

That's how you show up, okay?

I like to write gospel.

I like to write about a lot of different things and sometimes just how I feel right then and there just comes out on my mind and I just write in my mind tune.

I don't know how I do it, but I just jam on tune to it when I'm singing it, and then I just get on my head.

05679 thank you Lord.

She and two of her friends have formed a singing trio called The Angels, and they perform at church and school functions and once in a while, even an impromptu concert outside their homes.

Oh wow.

She's been singing ever since she was a little baby.

My mother used to come to her and she.

When, back when she was two months old.

You'd think between artwork, homework and writing and singing songs, Adriana Cole's time would be divided up about as much as it could be.

But amazingly, there is no end to her creative talents.

Adriana Cole is also an actress.

She has a role in a locally produced TV show called Sadie's Soap Suds Action.

Well, I just don't know what to say.

But she feels sad.

I feel sad too.

I play Anna and I'm a little dweeb.

I like my character is because I'm like, I'm sweet.

At the same time.

That can be very mean.

I knew that she was going to be an actress.

Now that's one thing that I knew.

The other part, the singing and the dancing and all of that.

I didn't really, you know, know if she would be doing that.

But acting.

Yes.

I did know that she would because she's been acting ever since she was a baby.

Most experts believe creativity is just something you're born with, what you do with it later on.

Well, that part is up to you.

I think one of the greatest things that children have is their imagination.

And so many times they're, you know, watching TV and they're really not imagining anything.

But art takes them one step farther and they can sit there and dream, you know, they're they're using their mind to dream new ideas.

And I think, I think imagination and creativity, I think a child needs to nourish that and, and work with every single day.

Well, no duh.

Well, you like you said you liked him.

He's mine.

That's what Adriana Cole does.

And she has some advice for other youngsters how to doing the things.

Well, just believe in yourself and don't let it might put you down and yeah, yeah, it's people are going to be jealous of you, but still.

Yeah, don't brag about it because it's a gifted thing.

And just go on with your life and wherever God wants you to be.

Be there.