To whom it may concern: It is my distinct pleasure to recommend to you Alexandria Sullens for a teaching position in your district.

As Alexandrias mathematics methods professor for the past 4 semesters, I have found her to be a dedicated, unique, and compassionate young teacher. Alexandria has a strong mastery of mathematics content, cares deeply about her students and their success, is skilled in implementing mathematics lessons that support high levels of student thinking and engagement, connects to her students and their lives, and has demonstrated an orientation to reflect critically on her work as a teacher. The Michigan State University teacher preparation program provides our teacher candidates with diverse opportunities to develop their teaching practice during their senior and internship years, and Alexandria has used her field experiences to learn and grow as a teacher. During her senior year placement, Alexandria engaged in solving mathematical tasks and unpacking the underlying mathematical ideas, planning and teaching lessons around rich mathematical tasks, and investigated student thinking both in the university and placement classroom. She challenged her middle school students at Lansing Gardner Middle School to engage in rich discussions around cognitively challenging tasks. Alexandria was recognized as a leader in her senior year class, both intellectually and socially. Alexandria elected to pursue her internship placement in Lansing Public Schools, a diverse district beset by a myriad of urban issues, including shrinking enrollments, scarce resources, high teacher and administrator turnover, and low morale for both teachers and students. Alexandria chose this placement at Everett High School because of her strong commitment to teach in high-needs areas. Her students initially saw her as an outsider, as she did not look or speak like them. Alexandria systematically worked from the start of the year to understand the students contexts and culture, both individually and collectively, and to help her students understand her own background and their connection. She did all this in the context of enacting mathematics lesson that were challenging and rigorous. During her internship at Detroits Cass Technical School, Alexandria has had to carefully plan, teach, and reflect on two major lessons that featured tasks of high cognitive demand. In both of these lessons and their accompanying assignments, Alexandria designed or adapted challenging mathematical tasks and organized her lessons in ways that made students responsible and accountable for the mathematics. Alexandria was extremely skillful at creating real-world applications and engaging her students in meaningful discussion with her and each other. Her spring-semester project involved incorporating more mathematics discourse her classroom practice in a meaningful way that supported students mathematical learning, a particularly challenging and important task in supporting the districts diverse population. As a part of our coursework, Alexandria participated with her peers in two multisite action research projects. These have involved investigation the ways in which students make sense of different mathematical representations and how they translate word problems to numerical and symbolic representations. Her groups

College of Education
Department of Teacher Education
Michigan State University 313 Erickson Hall East Lansing, MI 48824 517-353-5091 Fax: 517-353-5092 education.msu.edu/te

MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer.

research was of exceptional quality, and Alexandria was particularly articulate about how the results of this research will influence her practice next year. Alexandria also takes her professional development as a teacher very seriously. During our courses together, she consistently engaged with me, seeking ideas about assignments, clarifying expectations, and searching for resources to better serve her students. She offered to teach a social justice related task with a colleague in another placement and brought in student work for our class to analyze as a group, representing an orientation towards professional collaboration and growth. She also was one of five interns to travel to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Annual Meeting in Philadelphia at their own expense. Alexandrias attention to her students thinking, mastery of mathematics content, skill in implementing tasks of high cognitive demand, anticipating student solutions, and reflecting on her practice are similar to beginning teachers with several years of experience. Her work in her internship at Cass Tech has been exceptional. Moreover, her preparation at Michigan State University and her instructional practices in the classroom align strongly a student-centered, inquiryoriented model of instruction that supports meaningful student learning. Whereas other beginning teachers might struggle with a student-centered approach, Alexandria has experience working with meaningful mathematical tasks and implementing them with students. I give Alexandria Sullens my fullest possible recommendation - she is already an exceptional teacher and will make an outstanding addition to your instructional team. Please dont hesitate to contact me with any questions about Alexandrias work in the teacher preparation program or in the classroom. Regards,

Dr. Michael D. Steele Assistant Professor, Department of Teacher Education Michigan State University mdsteele@msu.edu 517.432.1504