Jarritt Ahmed Sheel is a fourth-year doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Music and Music Education Department. As a professional musician, he has toured internationally, worked with hundreds of students in high school band programs throughout the great states of Illinois, Florida, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia and New York. He has been fortunate to have taught music courses at the Aspen Award-winning Valencia College. Most recently he has taught collegiate level courses, based on Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Art History, and Democracy, in the City Universities of New York system (CUNY).

Mr. Sheel is currently the Ensemble Director for the Youth Workshop Band in the Youth Programs as part of the Education department at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. He has recently accepted a faculty position as a professor of Music Education at New York University - Steinhardt within their Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. At NYU, Professor Sheel is responsible for teaching a variety of music education courses, the supervision of student teachers and the coaching of ensembles. His research foci center around the intersectionality and potentiality of hip-hop (music, culture, and pedagogies) in music education. He is husband, father, pet owner, deejay, a professional  trumpet player with a live music group called The Freedom Now Project, a board member of the Association for Popular Music Education, an editor of the music resource website www.hiphopmusiced.com<http://www.hiphopmusiced.com/>, and leads a social media movement around the hashtag #hip hopmusiced.