1. June 11, 2012
To whom it may concern –
I am writing this letter to recommend Salma Tazi for a teaching position at your school. I had
the pleasure of working with Ms. Tazi in a course I taught entitled Geometry for Teachers at
Boston University during the spring semester. The course was part of the required courses for
Teach for America candidates working toward their Master’s degree at the university. The
course focuses on the content of high school geometry as well as lesson planning and
pedagogical techniques.
Within the course, Ms. Tazi did very well. During group work activities, she was an active
participate offering suggestions, providing possible solutions methods, and asking clarifying
questions on parts in which she needed further elaboration. Even more impressive was the fact
that she always viewed the work that we did through the critical eye of how it would help her
students. She consistently took the ideas discussed in class back to her own classroom, modified
them, and used them with her students. She would then return the next week and report on her
results and discuss how she would use them in future years.
One of the major projects in the course is researching a topic in geometry. Students are asked to
pick a topic, examine the research on this topic in the NCTM journals, and then write a two
lesson sequence using the research. Most students complete strong projects but tend to view the
project as more of hypothetical one that they can use in future years. In contrast, Ms. Tazi
immediately experimented with the lessons that she was developing and used this
experimentation to influence her final project.
Ms. Tazi is a teacher who consistently thinks about her students and giving them the best
education possible. It is evident from the work that she did in my class and from the strong
results that her students achieve on the MCAS test.
If you have any questions, please contact me at mchedi@bu.edu
Sincerely,
Matthew Chedister