Hall-Dale High School

To Whom it may concern,

I am writing to recommend Kristen Kaiser for employment at your school. I have been working with Kristen as her mentor teacher during the second portion of her student teaching through Maine College of Art. She was eager to begin teaching all 8 high school classes and showed great confidence engaging with the Art 2 students who could be challenging and was keen on helping students find the joy of making art. Kristen showed great flexibility with shifting gears between Printmaking, Adv. Drawing and Painting, Photography and Metalsmithing and especially with the shift to online teaching when the pandemic caused schools to close. Kristen started creating video demonstrations, edited some of my videos, uploaded them along with photo examples, brainstorm worksheets and criteria for multiple units for each of the classes. She did all of this within the first two weeks of our school’s shut down when Hall-Dale was still unsure what distance learning was going to look like for the different grade levels. Each school district handled the onset of the pandemic a little differently and Kristen continued to shine with her ability to adjust the units to meet the needs of students and match the districts plan. She also created spreadsheets to document when students were engaging through emails or video chats in order to reach out to students that we had not heard from.

Kristen demonstrated her passion for teaching art, confidence in dealing with some difficult classroom situations, flexibility within a variety of situations, willingness to help as a team player, and eagerness to learn new things. I highly recommend her for a teaching position in your school.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Paisley

Hall-Dale High School Art Teacher