Sharon Wass is the head of Wass Education Consulting, a group that meets a variety of educational needs. Services include: academic advice for post secondary, adult basic education, curriculum development, English language tutoring, historic plays, food safety training and advising, and editing. Sharon has been an educator for many years and has held contracts with School District #6, College of the Rockies, Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, and Steele O’Neil and Associates. As a Food safe instructor she travels throughout the East Kootanays teaching Food safe Levels One and Two and Marketsafe.
Background
Born in Sundre, Alberta, Sharon Wass spent her childhood in Western Canada learning the basics of running a restaurant, a hotel, a convenience store and a gas station when her parents purchased the Mountain Aire Lodge. This love and commitment to hospitality continued through her teenage years and into adulthood. It was these early experiences that cemented Sharon’s commitment to ensuring safe environments for both the worker and consumer.
While working in the hospitality industry and Parks Canada, Sharon received her BA in Canadian Studies and a Bachelor of Education with University of Victoria.
Her passion for writing, not only as a pleasurable pastime but as a source of education, led her to becoming a published author in 1988. Since then she has written short stories, memoirs, co-written a biography and a historic play. “My David” is a one act monologue in which she portrays herself in the first person of Charlotte Small, the wife of Canadian Explorer, David Thompson.
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."/ Nelson Mandela /
Experience
For over 20 years Sharon Wass has had the opportunity to teach every age level in the formal education system and facilitated programs with adults in a variety of venues. In 1999 she started to combine her practical hospitality experience with her education training. Her first contract was as Program Coordinator of a Food Services Program offered to young adults who were struggling to find employment without the benefit of high school graduation or formal training. Practical and theoretical cook training, FoodSafe and Serving It Right certification combined with academic courses toward graduation were followed by a two month work experience.
She then trained to be a provincial FoodSafe instructor which led to an auxiliary position with the College of the Rockies (COTR) as trainer for level one and level two and the new MarketSafe program, throughout the East Kootenay for the COTR. She also worked with the COTR as an Adult Basic Education (ABE) Teacher and Education Advisor.
For five years, Ms. Wass worked as Program Coordinator for a Targeted Initiative for Older Workers. This program guides 50 – 65-year-old individuals through the challenges of looking for work in the 21st century, where computer literacy and on-line searching and applying are a fact of life.