Michelle Otte, Denver Math Fellow Coordinator, DPS, 2017

I am pleased to write a letter of recommendation for Mr. Rob Acker.  Mr. Acker worked with the Denver Math Fellows for the 2016–17 school year.  As a Denver Math Fellow he led small group mathematics instruction for 7th and 8th graders at Lake International Middle School in Denver Public School. This school has a 97% poverty rate determined through free and reduced lunch eligibility, and has a significant Hispanic and African-American student population.

I was Mr. Rob Acker’s immediate supervisor and I worked with him in Math Lab on a daily basis.   Mr. Acker had a positive, successful experience as a math lab tutor instructing small group throughout the day.  He performed all of his teaching duties in a responsible and dependable manner with excellent attendance and timely lesson plans.  I particularly was impressed with his strength in lesson plan development and depth of knowledge of mathematics, as well as his commitment to humanistic education.  He planned his lessons well and time stamped his lessons beginning with a Do-Now, balancing direct instruction and ample opportunities for students to practice. He used instructional time effectively and ensured that each session ended with an exit ticket so as to formatively assess each student’s learning for the day.  Furthermore, he effectively used exit ticket data to re-teach misconceptions the next day. The NWEA MAPs data reflects his outstanding skills as all of his students improved over the year significantly above the average and projected growth rates, often by a factor of double or triple the expectations… 

Mr. Acker is an incredibly effective small and large group tutor, and I believe he is more than capable of transferring those skills to both whole class environments and to a school’s professional development. His dependability, planning skills, disposition and rapport with students are all integral parts of his strengths. Denver Math Fellows was very lucky to have him as a fellow as he brought with him years of experience teaching in a wide variety of settings.