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

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