UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

AT CHICAGO
English Department (M/C 162)
Room 2027, University Hall
601 S. Morgan Street
Chicago, Illinois 60607-7120

May 22, 2018

To Whom It May Concern:

I am pleased to write this letter highly recommending Danielle Bauman-Epstein for a teaching
position at your school. Danielle and I have known each other since the fall of 2016, when she
was a student in my graduate-level “Language and Literacy” seminar. She was also enrolled in
my “Methods of Teaching English” course in the fall of 2017. In the most recent semester
(spring, 2018), Danielle was among the student teachers who attended a weekly seminar that I
directed.

Permit me to be as direct as possible: Danielle is a truly outstanding teacher—among the best

we’ve had at UIC for the past several years. I’ve been impressed, especially, by how she
complements her formidable intellect and scholarly curiosity with a strong ethical commitment
to students. Equally impressive is Danielle’s creative ability to design lessons that target specific
reading and writing skills in ways that engage and accommodate students with varying learning
styles.

These attributes were already in evidence when Danielle took my “Language and Literacy”
seminar. Even in this group of very smart graduate students, Danielle’s work was exceptional in
terms of its quality and sophistication. She went beyond what I expected in the extent to which
she was able to grasp the complex relationships among the many issues that arise in
conversations about language teaching. For instance, in our discussions and weekly response
papers, Danielle delved into questions about how "literacy" might be defined and deployed to
promote democracy, how our current conditions of political economy have influenced schooling,
and the extent to which (or whether) reading and writing can play a role in ameliorating poverty
and other forms of injustice. Her final seminar paper, especially, demonstrated the agility of
Danielle's thinking. In this paper Danielle explored (and learned a great deal about) the complex
history of charter schools, paying particular attention to the ideological/conceptual dissonance
between charter schools' progressive "grassroots" origins and the "school choice" movement. As
this collective work suggests, Danielle sees connections among complex ideas that others often
miss, and she is able to articulate how analytical frameworks drawn from educational, political,
and cultural theory can be usefully applied to discussions about teaching and learning.

Danielle's disposition as a thoughtful/reflective educator took a necessarily more practical turn

when she was enrolled in my "Methods" course last fall. For that course's major project – a four-
week thematic unit based on a Shakespeare play – Danielle prepared a unit on Othello that was
remarkable in terms of its clear objectives, its “backward planning” strategy of sequencing
lessons to scaffold students' skill development, and its multiple forms of formative and
summative assessments. Moreover, I was impressed by the way in which Danielle thematically
organized her unit to help students explore the complex notion of “the villain” in literature and
society, as well as the causes and consequences of human motivation, especially jealousy. As I
suggested above, the unit included many creative assignments and activities that accommodated
a wide range of student ability and learning styles. In addition to carefully acclimating students
to the (often difficult) Elizabethan language, Danielle’s lessons featured—among other things—
well-chosen supplementary texts ranging from Anne Frank’s Diary to the movie Mean Girls,
small group and full-class discussions, opportunities for students to conduct extensive character
analysis with the help of insightful guide questions and graphic organizers, written responses in
multiple genres, “close readings” of key passages, and extensive use of audio/visual technology.
In sum, this unit goes a long way in demonstrating Danielle’s skill in using a broad range of
effective and creative teaching methods. That said, what stood out for me was the way in
which—despite the fact that Othello was written over 400 years ago—Danielle crafted this unit
“in dialogue” with kids’ present experiences and priorities. More specifically (and to paraphrase
how Danielle put it in her unit Rationale), this unit was designed to invite students to reflect on
both the positive and negative aspects of human nature and the human experience, with the hope
that such reflection will help students better understand their position in the world and the
choices they will make in life. All this is to say that if you invite Danielle to join your school
community, you will be getting a teacher who ensures that her students will understand how
reading and writing can “matter” to them. Put yet another way, as a teacher, Danielle knows not
only what she is doing but also why.

By now I hope it's clear that I have great respect for Danielle's abilities and accomplishments as a
teacher, even at this early stage in her career. To what I’ve already said, let me just add that
Danielle has an exceptional understanding of the literature and writing skills that make up the
"content knowledge" of the English language arts. Moreover, on a personal level, Danielle is
friendly, adaptable, funny, and eager to learn—all qualities of a great colleague. Again, I
recommend her enthusiastically and without hesitation, and I invite you to contact me if you
would like to discuss your application further.

Sincerely,

Todd DeStigter
Associate Professor of English Education
tdestig@uic.edu
773.391.4981 (mobile)