PLATTE CANYON SCHOOL DISTRICT

P.O. Box 295

57393 US Hwy 285
Bailey, CO 80421

October 27, 2015

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter of recommendation for Mrs. Elizabeth Chahine. Mrs. Chahine
and I worked together from 2009 2012 when she taught third grade at Inter-American
Magnet School in Chicago. I was the principal at Inter-American during this time.
I strongly recommend Mrs. Chahine for a teaching position in your school system. She is
a gifted educator and a quality person.
Mrs. Chahine has many wonderful qualities but one of her qualities that made her such an
exceptional teacher was being a team player. As her principal, I could count on her
taking leadership in her grade level team to maximize the use of weekly collaborative
planning sessions to develop learning units, design weekly lesson plans and evaluate the
effectiveness of these instructional plans. She also took leadership roles at the school
level to help facilitate effective decision-making and build a school-wide program of
instruction that was grounded in best practices and what was best for students. She had a
way of networking with others to facilitate change through her positive relationships with
colleagues and families in the school.
Mrs. Chahine has a strong commitment to educational excellence and she is not afraid to
take risks in her teaching to stay current with research and best practices. When others
were intimidated by the RTI/MTSS initiative, she accepted the challenge and she was
soon teaching others about ways to evaluate and diagnose what students needed to learn
and how to design intervention plans. She is an excellent literacy teacher who
understands how children learn to read and write which contributes to her ability to sort
out when a part of that process breaks down for a child. In addition, she understands
language acquisition and she is skilled at problem-solving and sorting out the roles that
language and learning play in the complex job to learn to read and write in two languages
as well. She also embraced the challenge to create integrated units designed with the
backwards planning model and she led discussions about effective ways to track
student progress to evaluate mastery of the standards and evidence outcomes through a
standards based grading model. She took on the challenge to implement a Community
Rights and Responsibilities school behavior model by having her students develop videos
to model the elements of the program for others students.

One more quality that must be mentioned is that Mrs. Chahine is a quality person. She
cares about the well-being of her students and her colleagues. She is generous with her
positive energy to make others feel included and valued. She has a humanitarian spirit
about her. She expects equity and her actions inspire others to join her to achieve this in
her classroom and her school.
It is without any hesitation that I recommend Mrs. Elizabeth Chahine for a position in
your school system. If you have any questions regarding Mrs. Chahines work, please do
not hesitate to call 303.838.7666 ext. 1203 or e-mail vvallez@plattecanyonsd1.org.
Respectfully,

Vernita M. Vallez
Principal
Deer Creek Elementary School
Bailey, Colorado