Each year the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES) and Elsevier, the leading health careers educational publisher, accept instructor nominations for the prestigious Master Teacher Award. This special award recognizes best practices in teaching in the allied health field. This year one of our very own instructors, Mary Jo Jobbit, was nominated for the 2014 Master Teacher Award.
Although Mary Jo Jobbit was not selected as the final recipient of the 2014 award, her nomination places her among the top health careers educators in the country. The Port Huron team is extremely proud of Mary Jo and have have included her Master Teacher nomination for all to enjoy…
As a Clinic Instructor in the Medical Assisting profession, Mary Jo Jobbitt embodies the essence of a true teacher. She ignites the students’ passion for learning with her excitement in the classroom. Her teaching style is unique and creative.
Mary Jo has been a valued member of our Ross Medical Education Faculty team since November 2009. She began her career in the role of Teaching Assistant and Substitute. In three short months she began teaching in her own classroom. To date, she is teaching two classes in a full-time capacity. She has also earned her credentials as a Registered Medical Assistant and most recently as an Allied Health Instructor, both through The American Medical Technologists.
Mary Jo has over sixteen years of experience as a Medical Assistant, working for a local Pediatric Network of physicians. During Mary Jo’s career with Physicians HealthCare Network, she has had the opportunity to work with many Physicians and Nurse Practitioners. One of Mary Jo’s responsibilities and strengths during her years with the Network was to assist in the training and development of new Medical Assistants. During her tenure she played a key role in assisting with the opening of satellite offices and managing the Medical Assistant teams. With her passion for training and sharing her knowledge, the classroom was an obvious step on her career path and a seamless transition.
Mary Jo possesses a teaching style unmatched by any other Instructor. She is funny and quirky yet very serious about the content of her curriculum. She teaches the necessary soft skills to her class while engaging them in real life experience. Students in her class cannot sign in for the day if they are not in proper dress code which includes wearing their name badge for identification. Violations of the dress code or any other ‘Standard of Excellence’ are not tolerated and handled immediately. This is a just one way Mary Jo prepares her students for employment. Her attention to this detail generates employable Medical Assistants. She has implemented additional strategies to teach professionalism in the classroom. Students “work” in the clinic and must address their classmates as they would patients in the field. When observing the classroom, it looks and feels like a medical practice in motion.
Mary Jo also assists our Career Services Department with weekly externship seminars. It is Mary Jo’s responsibility to co-teach the extern seminar curriculum, check weekly homework assignments, and actively participate in the debriefing session with externs. Mary Jo’s experience in the medical office provides the students valuable insight when relating their new experience in a medical practice. Mary Jo assists with mentoring the students to master their soft skills and become more employable. Mary Jo’s efforts in this area also lend to continued excellence in our campuses placement rates.
Many of the students who have graduated from Mary Jo’s classroom through the years are now in the healthcare field working as lead Medical Assistants and are responsible for training and mentoring others. They are equipped to handle the weight of this very important role thanks, in part, to the example they witnessed during the time spent in the classroom setting with Mary Jo. The impact that she has had in the lives of her students is undeniable. A quote by Henry Adams is very appropriate when trying to explain Mary Jo’s impact on her students; “A teacher affects Eternity. No one can tell where his influence stops.”
One topic dear to her heart is community involvement. Mary Jo stresses a strict work ethic coupled with an emphasis on working to better the community. Mary Jo feels that students must learn that giving back to the community is a necessary duty of any allied health professional. Not only should the students participate, they should want to be a part of the community and its efforts. As an example to her students, Mary Jo participates in many events in our local community including food drives, hospital health fairs, school supply drives, March of Dimes and The American Cancer Society events. Her basis behind her community event theory is that the students will evolve into allied health professionals and helping others in need is part of that evolution. Mary Jo instills in her students a feeling of being a part of something bigger than themselves.
On a lighter side, Mary Jo has a heart of gold. She dedicates an extensive amount of time to class preparation. In fact, Mary Jo is usually the first person on campus daily. She is thoughtful and kind to her co-workers. She is an asset to the Faculty team and her fellow Instructors enjoy discussing the work day and planning classroom activities with her. Mary Jo is especially funny and is very animated when giving examples. This trait makes her lectures extraordinarily engaging.
Although her passion for teaching and her students are her pride and joy, Mary Jo’s first love is her family. Mary Jo and her husband have two adult children and two beautiful granddaughters. She is certainly an inspiration both in and out of the classroom.