America's favorite teacher could be from Stoner Creek Elementary School

Abbey Nutter, The Lebanon Democrat, Tenn.
·3 min read

Apr. 13—A Stoner Creek Elementary School teacher has advanced into the Top 15 in the group phase of a national competition.

"That's just wild to me that I'm getting all this support online from everybody to keep going," Bass said. "I'm just one more week closer to achieving the grand prize. We're just going to keep working hard every week campaigning."

Bass originally submitted her application after seeing an advertisement on social media. The winner of the America's Favorite Teacher competition will win $25,000, a trip to Hawaii and an appearance in Reader's Digest.

"I didn't hear back from them for a couple weeks and then they ended up emailing me saying I was a finalist in the competition," Bass said. "I thought that was so exciting."

There were originally over 100 teachers in Bass's group for the competition. Bass found out on Thursday night that she'd made the Top 15.

Bass has wanted to be a teacher since she was five years old.

"My grandmother was actually my first teacher growing up," Bass said. "She was the main source of why I wanted to be a teacher because she taught me how to read and a lot about nature. She was a science teacher growing up and a lot of the things that she would teach me were things like the clouds and about birds and the life cycles of animals."

Bass said being taught by her grandmother held a special place in her heart, which is why she wanted to go into education.

After graduating from Smith County High School in 2013 in Carthage, she graduated from Tennessee Tech in 2018 before earning a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the same institution in 2020.

"Stoner Creek was my top choice of schools (in Mt. Juliet) because I had a college friend who actually taught here," Bass said. "That made a big impact on why I wanted Stoner Creek, because of how amazing it seemed like it would be. Of course, it is. I love it."

Bass got a job offer from Stoner Creek Elementary in the summer of 2020, just after the school had been destroyed by the March 2020 tornado, and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's been a wild ride all the way around," Bass said. "Going into my first year as a teacher, I was placed in a virtual setting because of COVID, so I was a virtual kindergarten teacher. I taught through a computer screen to five-year-olds for a whole semester. It had its ups and downs, but we made it through."

Then, in January 2021, Bass was able to go back into an in-person classroom. However, it wasn't until Nov. 28, 2022, that Bass and her co-workers stepped back into the re-built Stoner Creek Elementary.

"The moment of finally getting into our new school building at Stoner Creek was the light at the end of the tunnel through every high and low that our Stoner Creek Elementary family has went through," Bass said.