To Whom It May Concern:

I am honored to write a letter of recommendation for Alexis Baumgartner. Alexis

was a student teacher under my supervision at Arizona State University Mary Lou
Fulton Teachers College. Her student teaching placement was in a 6th, 7th, and 8th
Grade English Language Arts classroom at Cocopah Middle School in the Scottsdale
Unified School District. This was not just your standard ELA classroom. Her
mentor teacher was in the process of designing a unique curriculum that combines
language arts instruction and drama. Because this was the first year of this class,
Alexis assisted her mentor in designing the lessons for the classes. She possessed
little prior knowledge of how to teach drama, but constantly researched how to
integrate drama with the English Language Arts standards. Together, they
developed a comprehensive and outstanding curriculum that could and should be
emulated by other teachers.

Not only are the ELA/Drama classes new this year, but also Alexis and her mentor
had two RTI (Response to Intervention) classes that required them to develop
individual intervention learning plans for a group of 6th and 7th graders. The
students had some common academic needs, but often each student required an
individual focus. Alexis analyzed test results, synthesized the data, and designed a
unit of study that was color-coded by individual students to provide targeted
instruction and assessment. Both her mentor and I were astonished that she took
the initiative to undertake such an extensive and comprehensive project. This
approach provided a path and example for other teachers with RTI classes.

Alexis was masterful in designing standard-based lessons with clear evidence of

mastery that requires higher-level thinking. I observed Alexis teach a lesson on the
key features of ancient Greek and Roman drama productions with embedded
common core reading standards. She reviewed both the standard and objective of
the lesson, and then asked students to summarize in their own words as she
provided additional relevant information. Alexis prepared paper bags with
documents that required predetermined groups of students to read and cite textual
evidence. The bags were prepared to provide differentiated material for selected
students. The students engaged in a jigsaw activity with a T-chart designed to guide
understanding of the differences between Greek and Roman drama. At the end of
the lesson, the students were asked to write a summary of which style of drama
would they use to produce a play, and defend their claim with textual evidence.
Alexis designed a rubric to score the answers that was provided to the students
before they wrote their summary.

The students developed their own rubric for evaluating play productions. The
rubric was comprehensive and provided descriptors for each component of an
exemplary drama. For the second P.A., Alexis showed clips from the movie, Big, and
the students used the rubric to determine whether or not it could be used as an
accurate assessment tool. The students were highly engaged in evaluating their
class-created rubric as a tool to assess a real drama.

These examples describe Alexis’s intellectual and organizational abilities, but more
importantly, they show how she engaged her students in becoming part of the
learning process.

During post-conferences, Alexis was reflective about learning/teaching practices.

She understood each indicator and descriptor on the TAP rubric, and asked how she
could embed specific ones for the next day. She took feedback, researched the
underlying meaning, and displayed it at a higher level than I presented it to her. I
have learned from our conversations that she was in communication with the other
ELA and History teachers about what they were teaching. She tried to integrate her
curriculum with other disciplines, but maintained a similarity with the curriculum
map of the English department. Because she saw the need to make learning
meaningful for her students, she engaged in collaboration with an exchange that
was dependable and responsible.

Alexis Baumgartner demonstrates the characteristics and qualities of a teacher.

Because of her advanced level of abilities, her mentor and I nominated her for the
award of Outstanding Student Teacher. And she won!

Sincerely yours,

Pamela Clark

University Supervisor