May

10, 2021



To Whom It May Concern:

I enthusiastically recommend Ms. Anneliese Petersmarck as an English Language
Arts or Teaching English to Students of other Languages (TESOL) teacher at your
school. I have known Anneliese for two years as one of her English Education
professors. Anneliese is an exceptionally strong preservice teacher and will be a
great asset to any school because of her excellent planning for curriculum and
instruction and genuine care for students.

Anneliese is truly excellent at planning curriculum and instruction. I encourage you
to look through her website portfolio to see many examples of units and lessons
that she has created, but I will highlight one here. She designed a unit about media
bias in the news, certainly a timely topic and skill that’s needed by both youth and
adults alike. The unit centers on several Common Core State Standards for reading,
discussion, and writing, yet while teaching these academic skills also teaches
students necessary critical skills for accessing, reading, analyzing, and responding
to multimodal texts in the media. Her unit incorporates many recent and relevant
texts, allowing students to practice these necessary skills with just off-the-press
headlines, articles, and news reports. She doesn’t teach them what to read and
think but rather how to think critically about whatever they are reading and
viewing. She also taught these lessons in two different types of courses and
College of differentiated the content and pacing to best meet the needs of students in each
Education course. Her skill in curating these various texts and planning activities around
them is advanced far beyond a first-year teacher.
Teacher Education
I was lucky enough to observe Anneliese teach a few weeks before the pandemic
Michigan State University shut schools down in 2020. She was co-teaching a lesson in a class for students
620 Farm Lane,
313 Erickson Hall needing additional reading instruction and support. It was clear to me that
East Lansing, MI 48824 Anneliese had a strong relationship with the students, chatting with them warmly,
responding authentically to their questions, and redirecting them back to the
517-353-5091
Fax: 517-432-5092 activity when needed. The ways she designs curriculum and classroom
Education.msu.edu
management systems also shows her care for her students as she works tirelessly
to create a welcoming, safe, and inclusive classroom. She does so through the
classroom routines such as collaboratively building norms and creating class
playlists. She also integrates multimodal texts that show a variety of perspectives
and experiences so that all students can see themselves represented in the
curriculum.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions. It may be easiest to reach
me at my cell phone at (616) 485-4243 or my e-mail: jvheide@msu.edu. I have no
hesitation in recommending Anneliese for a teaching position at your school.

Sincerely,

Jennifer VanDerHeide, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English Education
Michigan State University
jvheide@msu.edu