To Whom It May Concern,

It is my privilege to highly recommend Emily Kash for a teaching

position within your school district.
Ms. Kash and I worked together at Walnut Bend Elementary School in
the Houston Independent School District for several months, during
which she learned and grew as a student teacher in my classroom.
Walnut Bend Elementary School is a very diverse school that serves
students of many different backgrounds. Our self-contained first grade
class is comprised 20 students, the majority of whom come from low
SES families. We have five gifted and talented students, as well as two
special education students (one with severe ADHD and one with an
emotional disability and other behavior disorders). Our class also has
four ESL students, three of whom are refugees from the Middle East.
Ms. Kash was responsible for meeting all students in the classroom at
their level of proficiency, as well as working with me to participate in
conferences with parents. She now has experience working with a very
diverse group of students and parents, and is prepared for her own
classroom.
Ms. Kash demonstrated many areas of competency. She
enthusiastically accepted responsibility in the classroom, and
embraced the creative nature of lesson planning during the holiday
season, which can be a challenging time of year. She explored and
sought out resources beyond the curriculum to use in lessons,
especially in science lessons. Ms. Kash also exhibited extreme
flexibility in her lead teaching, by taking on, researching, and teaching
a program (Words Their Way) that was new to her. Another one of the
skills consistently shown was Ms. Kashs use of accessing prior
knowledge at the beginning of lessons. She often opened a lesson
with an age-appropriate discussion of students associations with a
variety of topics including rocks, gingerbread men, soil, Native
Americans, poetry, the world, our country, and holidays.
Classroom management is by far one of the most difficult skills to
master as a new teacher. Ms. Kash established rapport with students
right away, and spent a lot of her beginning weeks in the classroom
pinpointing students who would later need extra redirection. When her
lead teaching time came, she had already been working with these
students, and her time and attention to them showed in the way they
responded to her authoritative role. Ms. Kash did her full lead teaching
during the last few weeks of the fall semester, before all the holidays.
She handled this chaotic time with ease. She asked for help from the
cooperating teacher and other teachers on the first grade team, and

was effective in disciplining students in an appropriate manner during

a particularly difficult time of year for even the most seasoned
teachers.
Ms. Kash will be an excellent teacher! She is very hard working, and
stayed late after school on most days to work on lesson plans, projects,
and grades. She is very creative and caring. Ms. Kash kept all of her
relationships very professional, and she is also personable and easy to
work with. She collaborates with others (not just her cooperating
teacher, but the entire first grade team), and is committed to learning
the procedures and policies for helping students, such as documenting
behavior or attending intervention meetings.
I recommend Emily Kash for a teaching position without reservation. If
you have any further questions or comments about her teaching
experience in HISD, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Jordan Anagnostopoulos
First Grade Team Leader
Walnut Bend Elementary School