To whom it may concern,

I was Kayla Ross’ mentor teacher at Brentwood Elementary School during her senior
intern assignment throughout the 2023/2024 school year. Kayla completed 10 months
of student teaching in 1st grade general education classroom under my supervision. I am
pleased to be able to write a letter of recommendation for Kayla.
During Kayla’s student teaching experience, she was highly motivated to learn as much
as she could and perform to her best capacities. She frequently put in long hours to
develop lesson plans and monitor student progress. She asked for feedback on a weekly
basis and accepted constructive criticism with maturity. She made it a priority to
observe experienced teachers closely in order to improve her own teaching practices.
Kayla has several strengths that would serve as an asset to any classroom. However, her
main strength, from my observations, is her ability to motivate students. She always
seemed sincerely interested in their progress and presented new material in a way that
captured their attention. For example, she led students in Heggerty, our phonemic
awareness program, where she learned the specific hand signals correlating to each
topic in order to teach many fast-paced lessons where student engagement was high.
She also taught many activities that required multiple-step directions to complete a craft
or project culminating a unit. Kayla consistently displayed dedication in planning lessons
and motivating students. She quickly learned that the best way to manage a classroom,
is to keep students on-task with projects that were both interesting and challenging. She
also did an excellent job of recognizing when a student or students needed special
assistance or support and immediately pulled them to work in a small group or one-on-
one setting.
In summary, Kayla displays the qualities that make a teacher successful. She is
dependable, motivated, and is in tune with the needs of her students. She works well
with colleagues and administration and is able to learn from those around her and adapt
quickly to the many demands of the school setting. I highly recommend her for any
teaching position she desires.

Carinda Lowther
Mentor Teacher
Brentwood Elementary School
clowther@brentwood.k12.ca.us