Evaluation Year

Teacher’s Name:
Peter Assimakopoulos

Administrator’s Name:
Cindy Plantecoste

Administrator’s Comments:

We couldn’t be happier to have Peter as a member of the MS. In his first year on our team he
has make an incredible impact of positivity through his actions, his leadership, his can do
attitude, and his active involvement in a wide-range of activities. Peter jumped into the MS
with a full load a classes, and a new leadership role as our G6 team/advisory leader. He has
been very effective in all aspects of this role, by establishing effective routines for the G6
team, by always being prepared and flexible, and by being responsive to the needs of his
teammates. Peter shared that he was quite happy with the evolution of G6 team over the
course of the year. He has worked hard to ensure successful interactions and to build
relationships with all members of his team, despite a range of collaborative challenges
presented to him by some of his teammates.

In terms of collaboration on his subject team, Peter has been working with Jaleea and
Augusta on their common PPP goal of strengthening the use of subject specific vocabulary
across the school to enhance reflection. They wanted to investigate how the use of a common
set of subject-specific vocabulary could strengthen the overall student learning or product, by
helping students be specific in their reflections. Peter shared that working on this goal actually
made a huge benefit in terms of students being able to clearly and specifically craft reflections
about their performances that had an impact on future learning. In addition to the PPP goal,
he has been regularly collaborating and working with his performing arts team in the new unit
planner.

As a teacher, one of Peter’s primary goals is to first establish strong student-teacher

relationships by getting to know his students. In the classroom, Peter ensures to plan for
engaging lessons that are designed with the needs of a middle-schooler in mind. He allows
for movement, planning, feedback, a wide-range of learning activities, and provides tons of
positivity and encouragement to his students. Using our MS PD on the use of block time,
Peter has been regularly building in intentional brain breaks mid-lesson. He has been working
towards ‘hooking’ student interest by creating some games around the learning goals to
incorporate some fun into the learning experience, but he shared that his students don’t see
them as games. His classroom is a safe place where his students feel comfortable to take
‘creative’ risks, try things out, reflect, and try again. Peter’s students report that they feel
successful, challenged, and happy in his class.

For his own professional learning, and to further the learning of his students, Peter sponsored
a student/teacher field trip to ISTA in Indonesia.

Outside of the classroom, Peter has been very involved in supporting our ISB community. He
co-hosted our MS Arts Council, directed Theater Sports, and the MS Musical, Mulan),
Theater, he co-developed our G5-6 Bridge Day and served as the Grade 6 team/advisory
leader. We can’t thank him enough for his contributions to our community.

Teacher's response, if desired:

Thank you so very much, Cindy. It has been wonderful working with you this year.