Educational Studies

SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

610 E. UNIVERSITY AVE., ROOM 1228

ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
April 2022

To whom it may concern,

I have been working with Mimi Klee since last September as her field instructor. In that role I have
observed her teach several times which involved reading her detailed lesson plan ahead of time,
watching her teach that lesson and then having an in-depth conversation afterwards about the lesson. I
also read her daily lesson plans and various other assignments during the academic year such as her
syllabus, her philosophy of teaching and learning, her philosophy of classroom management, etc.
It has been a real pleasure to see the progress that Mimi has made over these 8 months from student
teacher to really coming across as the person with the confidence and knowledge and skills of an
experienced teacher. She has learned to design lessons with plenty of variety to engage students but also
with excellent scaffolding so that every student in the classroom can easily grasp and understand and
then apply the concepts being taught. She has learned to adapt her lessons to the strengths and needs of
her students, especially her weekly focal student (a requirement of the field journal that we assign to the
student teachers). Which meant, of course, that the adaptations worked for all of the students. She also
learned to ‘do’ the activities and ‘take’ the assessments herself to make sure there weren’t any mistakes,
or items that were not clear or instructions that were incomplete. It also helped her get a better idea of
the timing needed. She also has become quite adept at adjusting her lessons mid-stride when needed.
She intentionally designs lessons with a wide variety of activities so as to address the strengths and
interests of all her students. Her students are engaged in the lesson and respond to her questions and
prompts.
Mimi learned to use effective instructional strategies such as making sure her instructions were well
scaffolded (one step at a time) and clear. At first, she had a tendency to do a lot of the talking and work
of the class and I kept pushing her to do less and have the students do more. She was also at first
reluctant to call on each student every day as she didn’t want to ‘put them on the spot’. This is a
common reluctance with new student teachers. I kept pushing her to call on each and every student
every day and she soon saw how effective this practice is in getting students to participate more and feel
more confident. This also meant that the students did more of the talking/work which also helped her
assess how they were understanding the activity or concept of the moment. She also found that she loved
having students do more because she saw that she got the best results from them that way. Students
who were not achieving what they could started to open up more and make more of an effort because of
the daily attention they were getting.
Mimi learned to use a variety of resources and to create a unit plan at the beginning of each unit to
help her map out the daily lessons. She had the opportunity to work with 2 sections of Spanish 2, one of
which seemed to struggle more than the other. She learned to focus on the needs of those students
struggling more which, of course, helped all of the other students. She became very comfortable leading
the class as a whole as well as guiding smaller groups in their work. She also had the opportunity to
work with the Spanish 6 class (seniors who took AP as juniors and want to continue with Spanish), a
class of only 7 students. Because of her skills in Spanish, she was able to work well with this advanced
group and give them more opportunities to practice their speaking.
Mimi created a positive learning environment for the students with high expectations. She had clear
rules and was always thoughtful in her approach to any signs of disrespect to her or the other students.
It is very obvious that she loves working with the students and wants the best for them. She makes her
rules and expectations very clear and follows up as needed. She also gives a lot of positive
reinforcement both individually and to the class as a whole. As soon as they walk in to class, she is
asking how they are doing, etc. Any issues are addressed with one-on-one conferencing with the
student first. She has had to notify parents about some academic concerns and when the student
improved (started doing homework), also let the parents know about the improvement as well as
talking about other aspects of the student she appreciated. It’s very clear that she genuinely cares about
and enjoys her students.
Mimi has also learned to create assessments that are fair and truly assess student knowledge in a
variety of ways. As she told me, it’s easy to want more ‘fun’ and play games, and forget about
assessments. But all kinds of assessments are feedback to the students and a way to learn how to best
help them learn. She also tried having students give feedback to each other, especially around
presentations and projects and found that she really likes that as long as it well structured, of course.
One of the aspects that I most appreciated in our working relationship is how open Mimi is to
feedback. Our after-observation debriefs easily lasted an hour or more as I pushed her to think of
various ways to connect with the students, to improve her scaffolding, to make her expectations clearer,
etc. She was always very receptive to the ‘pushes’ and was really thoughtful about her implementation
of the ideas/practices that came from those discussions. And it showed clearly in the following
observation.
Mimi has the skills and desire to become an outstanding teacher. She is well on her way and will be
an asset to any school that hires her. I strongly recommend her.

Dr Isabelle Carduner