William Howard Taft High School

An International Baccalaureate World School

Mission- Educating Global Citizens
Vision- Create a Better World
One School, Two Campuses, School Starts at 7:30am

Varsity Campus: 6530 West Bryn Mawr Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60631
Freshman Academy Campus: 4071 North Oak Park Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60634
Telephone 773.534.1000 ● www.tafths.org
Mark Grishaber
Principal
November 17, 2021
To Whom It May Concern,
It’s my pleasure to write this letter on behalf of McKenzie Lacefield. As the diverse learners co-teacher in one
section of Ms. Lacefield’s SL English A: Language and Literature I course during the first semester of the 2021-2022
school year at Taft High School, I came to admire her positive attitude. Ms. Lacefield is a reflective educator who will
no doubt continue to develop and grow.
Ms. Lacefield brings a lot of heart into the classroom. In the course I share with her, she has built a good
rapport with many of the students and can speak both on social and academic levels with them. Our early focus was
on visual media in anticipation of students taking the IOA at the end of the year, which requires students to use both
literary and non-literary texts. Ms. Lacefield’s own background in the arts was helpful toward seeing these texts in
different ways, not only for students but for me too. To illustrate this, on one occasion Ms. Lacefield helped guide
students through analyzing a digital image by Ugur Gallenkus, who publishes his work on Instagram, by not only
posing guiding questions about the image itself but also asking students to explore the medium of Instagram itself by
looking at how other accounts were tagged to address audience.
As a member of the Junior English Teacher Collaborative Team, Ms. Lacefield proved herself to be a true
team-player. Along with another student teacher on the course team, Ms. Lacefield took input from her colleagues and
helped to put together a new unit for English III focused on media literacy with the series Black Mirror as a central
text. She’s open to new ideas and approaches to creating and implementing lessons. For example, during one
professional development day, Ms. Lacefield helped to coordinate a brainstorming group to collaboratively develop
the culminating summative assessment for the upcoming unit. Her listening skills and willingness to try new things
will serve her well on any future grade level or course team.
If you have any other questions about Ms. Lacefield, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at rdfarrell@cps.edu.
Ms. Lacefield is a caring, thoughtful educator, and I have no doubt that she will be an excellent addition to your school
community.
Sincerely,

Richard D. Farrell
Diverse Learners Teacher
William Howard Taft High School (Chicago Public Schools)
rdfarrell@cps.edu

● Teaching Academics For Tomorrow ●