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School of Education, 3206 University Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50311

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter in recommendation of Mr. Gabriel Parker, an applicant for a


teaching position in your school district.

I first met Mr. Parker when he enrolled as a graduate student in the Masters of Arts in
Teacher Education program at Drake University. Since that time, I have come to
respect his abilities, both as a student and as a future teacher.

Gabe is an intelligent man who possesses many of the characteristics of a natural born
teacher. He is creative, flexible, open-minded, and able to adapt to the emergent
conditions of the classroom as they are presented. These attributes have allowed him
to succeed as a pre-service teacher at Drake, and I have no doubt that they will allow
him to excel as a teacher in your district. It is his passion for teaching and his ability to
design rigorous and authentic learning experiences for his students; however, that
separates Gabe from his peers.

As a student in my instructional methods course, Gabe was asked to create a unit of


instruction using the Understanding By Design (UbD) framework. This approach to
curriculum design emphasizes standards-based instruction and performance-based
assessment in an effort to provide students with purposeful and engaging learning
experiences. Gabe embraced the UbD framework and designed a unit where students
studied ratios, proportions, and rationale numbers. In addition to employing flexible
grouping as a differentiated instructional strategy, Gabe utilized problem-based
learning so that his students could truly demonstrate what they had learned. His unit
was, by far, one of the best that I received, with respect to its level of rigor and
integration of authentic learning and assessment.

Please accept my highest recommendation of Mr. Gabriel Parker. He will make a fine
addition to your faculty. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me by
email at todd.hodgkinson@drake.edu or by phone 515-271-4565.

Sincerely,

Mr. Todd Hodgkinson


Assistant Professor of Secondary Education
Drake University

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