Iver C.

Ranum Middle School

Charisse Goza, Principal
Thomas Evans, Assistant Principal
To the Hiring Committee,

2401 West 80th Avenue

Denver, CO 80221
Phone: (303)428-9577
Fax: (303)657-3952
Website: http://ranum@adams50.org
June 27, 2011

This is a letter of reference for Ms. Khristy Wisson. This past year Ms. Wisson was a Language Arts/Literacy
teacher for us here at Ranum Middle School. Our population is primarily Hispanic with a significant minority of
Caucasians, as well as Asian Pacific and African American. The vast majority of our students are on Free or
Reduced lunches. I tell you this because we found Ms. Wisson to be very effective in our building with our
population.
If our population wasnt challenging enough, we use the Standards Based System for instruction district wide. In a
nut shell, since students are to learn at their own pace the teachers essentially write IEPs for each child. Then the
teacher has to monitor and help the student at least maintain a reasonable pace or identify why they werent and
what is needed to be done to assist them in their learning. I tell you this because Ms Wisson met this challenge with
her students.
More specifically, Ms. Wisson used a blended approach to instruction such as, whole group, small groups,
individualized sessions, along with various types of media to present material for the students to learn from in her
classroom. I was not her evaluative administrator but was often passing by and dropped into her class to see how
things were progressing and was always impressed with the level of work and authentic engagement by the students.
There were days when they would be reading from a common book as group to help to learn the mechanics of
reading and help with overall comprehension. There were days they created a simple video project that let the
students safely share something about themselves and helped the other students come to know a little bit more about
their peers. Other times I would see students working in small groups to improve on their composition skills. Each
time I went in to the classroom you could she students focused and attentive to the task.
The classroom environment was comfortable enough that the students felt they could take the risks to ask the
questions that really needed to be stated to get the answers they were really seeking. As a result she would have the
students working with higher thinking orders skills then some of their peers would be using elsewhere in the
building. In terms of classroom management, she was outstanding. Rarely did I see a student from her classroom
and if I did it was after she (really the student) exhausted every reasonable alternative.
Ms. Wisson is a team player, collaborative with her peers and the originator of a few good ideas that I plan to apply
next year. She had one of the more effective approaches with parents on conference nights and Ive tried to get
other teachers to use a similar highly effective approach.
Sadly, she will not be returning to us but I strongly suggest you consider her in any teaching capacity in the
Secondary Language Arts or Social Studies Department that you may have in your district. She was one of our top
teachers and she comes with my top recommendation for hire. Call me if you have any questions, my personal cell
is 303-641-6510.
Sincerely,
Thomas M. Evans
Ranum Middle School
720 542 4812 Wk.
303-641 6510 Cell
tevans@adams50.org