DEilVER PUBTIC SGHOOLS

PARK HILL SCHOOL

TEL (720) 424-49LO
FAX
HTI

March 9,2015

/ / P ARI\H

(720) 42+4.935

LL.

DPSK12.ORG/

To Whom It May Concern,

Erynn Hooper has been an asset at Park Hill Elementary School. Erynn first began her work as a Univeristy of
Wyoming intern in my kindergarten classroom and currently is serving as my student teacher at Park Hill. I am
continually impressed by Erynn's work ethic and dedication to the teaching profession and have thoroughly
enjoyed watching her skills grow over the course of this year.
From the beginning, I have been impressed with Erynn's persistent focus on the needs and goals of each student,
the class, and the school as a whole. She has proven to be a natural at optimizing and individualizing effective
learning environments to meet the social, emotional and academic needs of every child. Erynn is quick to notice
students who are easily distracted and in need of a quie! structured environment in order to be successful. She
is keenly aware of when she needs to tweak the curriculum in these types of situations to cultivate student
growth in the classroom. This includes scaffolding lessons, checking for understanding by asking children to
verbally explain concepts and directions and provides encouragement to students through positive praise.

Erynn's personality in the classroom is calm and observant. I have noticed that she consistently improves
through self-reflection and collaboration with colleagues. Erynn is quick to scaffold lessons to better meet the
need of our ESL, gifted students, and students with special needs. After starting a unit on the five senses, which
she began by having students draw pictures and verbally list objects they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell,
Erynn noticed that parts of the curriculum were not challenging enough for those students reading at a first grade
level. After this self-reflection, Erynn took the initiative to enhance the curriculum to beffer meet the needs of
this group of students. She implemented an extra component which involved having children make text-toJife
connections and further expanded upon these concepts by implementing a Writer's Workshop component. With
a clear understanding of the curriculum, Erynn is able to self-reflect on the effectiveness of her lesson plans.
With a willingness to adapt these lesson plans and an eagerness to collaborate with her colleagues, Erynn is
continually perfecting her pedagogical skills.
Erynn has a positive rapport with administrators, stafl classroom volunteers, and parents. She has participated
in parent teacher conferences. During these conferences, she communicated strengths, weaknesses and future
goals to parents about their student in a meaningful and professional way. She was especially skilled at
developing partnerships with parents, developing strategies to help reverse negative behaviors in the classroom.
Parents were appreciative of Erynn's input and felt comfortable asking questions about how they can support the

child's learning at home.

Erynn is a strong candidate for an elementary teaching positon. She has demonstrated profound conceptual
understanding strong knowledge of how students leam and effective classroom instruction. Given her work
ethic, collaborative afiitude and strong foundation of best practices in education, Erynn would make a positive
contribution to any school.
Sincerely,

f-ar-O'UW
Linda Glick

Teacher
Park Hill School
Denver, Colorado

DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS PARK HILL SCHOOL

5O5O East 19th Avenue . Denver, CO 80220