2017 NISOD Excellence Award – Faculty
My philosophy about life is, “When I wake up in the morning, I believe I have been granted another day to get it right.”
My philosophy toward teaching is, “Everyone can learn! It’s all about matching your learner with their learning style and preference”.
Sheena Bass, ASU Mid-South’s 2017 National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) Outstanding Faculty Member, believes that a student’s learning is affected by the teacher as a whole. When called upon to teach, a teacher’s knowledge, patience, beliefs, and overall personality plays a huge role.
Sheena is a MedPro instructor and teaches Anatomy & Physiology and Clinical Math to area high school students who come to campus for healthcare related technical training. She experienced her first taste of teaching in 2001 as a continuing education instructor and employee educator at Regional One in Memphis, Tennessee (formerly The Regional Medical Center). She realized through that experience that she truly enjoyed teaching.
When she decided to go back to school, she chose to complete her degree in education rather than nursing. “I’ve done a lot of things in nursing. I like nursing and I like healthcare. But I absolutely love teaching.
She decided to focus her training on special education. The main reason I chose special education is because I really do not understand why it’s called “Special Education”? The name Special Education was designed to promote and implement a specialized training to students that were struggling in certain areas or subjects. After many years of teaching, I realized that, based on every student’s learning style, special education can be beneficial and work for all students. I realized that special education was designed for diverse learners and that everyone learns differently. I chose this specialty because it taught me how to deliberately differentiate my instruction in the classroom.”
Sheena shared that she varies her classroom approach and tries to adjust her teaching style based upon how her students are grasping the materials. She knows the classes she teaches can be scary and intimidating to many students. But her passion for her students and the material, mixed with her teaching style, make the material more fun and more interesting.
Sheena draws upon her diverse background every time she enters the classroom here. She understands real world nursing because she’s been there. She’s worked in long term care as a nurse, in a medical surgery unit, as an electronic medical records specialist, and as a medical records director in a long term care facility. She learned the structure of teaching from her previous role as the Director of Medical Assistants at Delta Technical College in Horn Lake, Mississippi. Sheena loves working at ASU Mid-South because she can teach the class she loves the most – Anatomy & Physiology.
“When I’m in the classroom, I’m in my passion, my own world! I really feel like I’m making a difference. With every student on campus you are filling an empty shell, because they are so young, you are pouring in the knowledge. What teachers do in the classroom truly impacts a student’s life.”
