Welcome:

The winter 2025 quarter came and went and here we are on the precipice of a new adventure: the spring quarter filled with excitement for new classes, ideas, and the exchange of knowledge? Sure. And, we’re also closer, but still so far, from summer break, which we know is not an actual break for almost everyone. 

With gratitude to the Teaching Team comrades for their unwavering support, intellectual exchanges, and great company. 

Thank you to those faculty who responded to the end-of-the quarter questionnaire I sent out at the end of last quarter. And, a special thanks to Jamila Kareem, who is featured in our Faculty Spotlight. 

Les deseo suerte, ganas, y amor for the beginning of this spring quarter!  

Important Dates for April:

• WP Symposium (online with an in-person reception to follow) THIS month on Friday, April 18 from 9 AM to 2 PM; followed by an in person reception in WP Conference Room 245
  • Join Zoom Meeting: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95422429414?pwd=HO7bU3ZRmoTnBcot4EjS31cIxNJ7eI.1
  • Meeting ID: 954 2242 9414
  • Passcode: 789140
• In-person faculty meeting on Tuesday, April 15 from 12-1 PM in HUM 202
• TLC Convocation with Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan on Thursday, April 24 from 5-8 PM at the Merrill Cultural Center (in-person and virtual registration required for this FREE event)
• Finally, be on the lookout for the spring Teaching Circles Google form from Ellen next week!

Community Corner:

Faculty Spotlight

The Teaching Team is delighted to feature our newest member of the teaching faculty, Jamila Kareem, Associate Teaching Professor. 

These are the questions Jamila responded to:

• How long have you been teaching in general?
• When did you start teaching for the Writing Program (Quarter & Year)?
• Have you taught at/do you teach for any other programs here at UCSC besides Writing? For any programs outside of UCSC? 
• What brought you to teaching (in general and/or here at UCSC)? 
• What is your favorite spot here at UCSC? In the world? 
• What do you like to do outside of teaching? 
• Any fun facts about yourself? 
• Do you have any fur, human, or plant babies? 🙂 If so, tell us a little about them.

• It’s weird to think about, but I started teaching in 2012. Over a decade at this point.
• Fall 2024
• Not yet!
• I believed that higher education writing education structures under served people who look like me and come from where I do–the hood, the ghetto, the slums, whatever you want to call it–so as someone with the access to knowledge and opportunities that could help change that, I wanted to play any role I could in bringing about change.
• I’m not familiar with the names of things yet, so at UCSC, I’ll say the Arboretum. In the world, maybe Verona, Italy or Santorini, Greece. I had great food and danced to fun music in both of those places. As a chronic introvert, home is always a favorite.
• Can I say sleep? Other than that, listen to, watch, research, obsess over K-Pop and K-Dramas. Star Trek is my other love, so I often have old episodes of TNG or DS9 on while I’m cleaning.
• I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m ARMY. Always willing to chat about anything related to that. I love horror films, especially psychological and weird horror, so any recommendations are welcome. 
• 🙁 Unfortunately, no. My dog of 12 years died in 2019 and I haven’t gotten another pet. 
• A blog post I wrote for Women at Warp: A Star Trek Podcast

Interested in being featured in our next Faculty Spotlight? We’d love to hear from you. Complete this form. 

Next up in our Community Corner, I’m sharing the responses to the end-of-the-quarter questionnaire I sent out at the end of the winter quarter.

As a refresher, I asked the following questions: 

• Is there a HIGHLIGHT from your winter quarter classroom that you’d like to share?
• Is there a LESSON you learned, your students learned, and/or you and your students learned together this quarter?
• Do you have any spring break adventures you’re looking forward to embarking upon?
• Do you have any “bring on the spring” rituals you participate in to celebrate a new, sunnier, and warmer season?
• Do you have a favorite flower? If so, why is it your favorite?
• Have you shared any tips with your students for surviving daylight savings time? 

Thanks to Joy and Brij for their responses! 

From Joy:

• There’s no escaping this year, so my adventure is reassembling the bathroom that I gutted in August🙄. My family claims the 80’s wallpaper was still better than the new normal of exposed studs, but I know they’re only saying that out of nostalgia for a second functioning bathroom.
• Go to the desert to visit some wildflowers in ridiculous conditions, like pygmy poppies in Death Valley; too friggin’ cute for words, so here’s a picture: Pygmy Poppy Photos 
• No way do I have just one favorite, but I’m really into my Mimulus cardinalis (scarlet monkeyflower) lately. The hummingbirds love it and the scarlet color is very eye-catching.
• Swapping video game playing from PM to AM is shockingly good for sleep hygiene and research studies back this up. Wake up extra early to play video games, because bright light and exciting things help set your rhythms on the right path. Plus, we’re more motivated to actually get up for something we want to do. Conversely, no late-night playing when we should instead wind down in dim light rather than winding ourselves up with bright or flashy light. 

From Brij:

• Nothing too specific but keeping both classes on track and morale up feels like a general highlight. I actually added a whole other essay project and it seems to have worked. (Trying to get back to more of a pre-COVID curriculum.) 
• A bit more of a strict late work policy and attendance policy were both successes and students appreciated them both. 
• Taking my father-in-law to Yosemite for three days/two nights to celebrate his 80th birthday! 
• A lot of house reorganizing/cleaning, getting the yard presentable, etc. 
• The California poppy. I love seeing them everywhere in the wild and the “golden state” color. 
• Afraid not. “Do your best!” 

Teaching Tools:

The Teaching Tools section features a review of one of the important workshops we had in the winter 2025 quarter: 

Writing Program Workshop, “Data and Dashboards for Equity-Based Teaching,” Robin Dunkin and Roxy Davis, TLC

From Brenda: On March 6, 2025, I attended the WP workshop on using data and dashboards for equity-based teaching. This workshop, organized by our own Robin King and presented by Robin Dunkin and Roxy Davis with TLC, introduced several tools to analyze and improve equity in our courses.

Here are the slides.

The first tool is the Getting to Know Your Students dashboard. This data is available shortly before each quarter begins and can be accessed either before or during your course. Using aggregated data, the dashboard provides information about student majors, demographics, and how students have done in previous courses. This information can be helpful to get to understand the make-up of your class as a group.

The second tool is the Course Analytics dashboard, which provides aggregated information about demographics, majors, and grades in specific classes. You can look at the data both in terms of specific groups (how do Underrepresented Groups do in your Writing 2) as well as intersectionality (how do Underrepresented male-identifying students do?). This information can help you track changes over time. 

For example, if you see that first-generation students tend to not do as well, you can research new practices to implement, add them to your course for several quarters, and then look at the data again.

In a given course, you can use either or both dashboards. While WP faculty noted that there are gaps–several of us have advocated for including disability data in the analysis–these tools provide useful quantitative data that can help you to better understand where equity gaps might exist in your classes.

What Do You Meme?

Once, again, the Teaching Team is asking for memes/gifs, reviews, and teaching tools. Please share your contributions via this Google form.

Hello and welcome to midterm week in the 2025 winter quarter:

Initially, I opened this message with an exclamation point and I had to delete it. 

Rhetorical choices and whatnot. 

I’m not in a very “exclamation point” kind of mood.  

Unless those exclamation points signify yelling. 

Out of fear and anger and powerlessness. (Oh, and if that yelling takes place deep on the inside because you’ve got so many tabs open in life and on your device and you have bills to pay, same, bb. ♥️)*  

So, while I can only speak from my positionality as a bigger, queer, and first-gen Chicana, who is also “a childless cat lady,” I might “meme” it out and send you clunky Google forms that could use some re-working, and I’m yellingcryingfreakingout on the inside. 

And I’m still here.

And, you, the one reading this blog instead of doing whatever else–good on you for taking a break–you’re still here, too. I’m so glad you are. 

Without further ado, thank you to my wonderful Teaching Team (TT) homies (oh yeah, we’re going there): for their brains, brilliance, and bravery. 

And, many thanks to you, dear colleague for your time. I hope the dates are useful, the faculty spotlights are enjoyable, the teaching tools inspire you, and the memes make you crack a smile. 

Suerte y salud hoy y siempre, 

Lara

*Real talk here: including this parenthetical twists my stomach in all sorts of shapes and I’m going to leave it because I believe it’s important to yell–in whatever form and especially “from the margins” (and here’s a lovely read about bell hooks by Crystal Wilkinson for you).

Important Dates: 

Mark your calendars for the following events:

• Douglass Day (3-7 p.m, Tuesday, February 18): From the website: “Each year, we celebrate the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass on February 14th. During our celebrations, we join forces at locations around the world. We work together to transcribe an online collection of Black history and culture. We aim to make Douglass Day open to everyone. Our planning team offers guides to help you learn how to transcribe or how to bring Douglass Day into your classroom. Douglass Day makes a real difference. We help create new resources for everyone to learn about Black history. … Douglass Day is a collective act of radical love for Black history.”
  • Join our own WP faculty member, Alexandra McCourt, and her writing students in HUM 1, 202 from 3-7 p.m. 
  • Stop by for all or part of the time. There will be cake! 🎂
• WP Disability Reading Group: Cure Rhetorics (12-1 p.m, Thursday, February 20):
  • Framing questions for discussion:
    • How do writing courses invite, tolerate, and resist rhetorics and pedagogies of cure and overcoming? 
    • What does it mean to resist fixing/curing students and/or their writing in writing courses? What does it mean to allow students to develop as writers and be unwell?
    • What does resisting cure/overcoming mean for writing faculty?
  • Readings:
    • 1. Hitt, Allison. Rhetorics of Overcoming: Rewriting Narratives of Disability and Accessibility in Writing Studies. National Council of Teachers of English NCTE, 2022.
      • → three pages from the introduction to establish rhetorics of overcoming (if interested, here is the full introduction)
    • 2. Clare, Eli. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Duke University Press, 2017.
      • → Chapter 1, Ideology of Cure (main reading)(if interested, here is the full introduction)
    • 3. Malakaj, Ervin, and Maggie Rosenau. “Feeling Bad, Together: The Pedagogy of Unwellness in Language and Culture Studies.” Feminist German Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2024, pp. 15–29. 
      • → first three pages only – marked on linked article above
• Teaching & Learning Center Events Calendar: “The Teaching & Learning Center in collaboration with the Committee on Teaching is pleased to announce that UCSC Teaching Week will be held February 24 – February 28, 2025. Teaching Week is an opportunity to celebrate and elevate the innovative teaching that is happening at UCSC in support of our shared goals of equity-minded and transformative learning for all of our students.”
• Tips & Tricks for Teaching Hybrid Writing (on Zoom w/Dev) (12-1 p.m, Tuesday, February 25): This optional professional development opportunity will be held on Zoom!
• Data and Dashboards for Equity-Based Teaching (WP DEI Workshop Led by TLC) (Thursday, March 6): “Quite a bit of demographic data is available to faculty that may promote equity-based pedagogy and course dynamics. This workshop will focus on data and instructor-level dashboards that Writing Program faculty can use to inform their teaching.”
• Spring WP Symposium CFP (Friday, April 18): The Writing Program will be holding our annual symposium on Friday, 18 April 2025, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Zoom with an in-person reception to follow in Humanities 210, 2:00 to 3:00 PM.
  • Please fill out the Google From by Monday, 3 March if you are interested.  
  • Since its founding in 1965, UCSC has sought to provide a teaching-focused, liberal arts education often with small class sizes through a humanities-based approach.  As we’ve grown to a more traditional research-based institution the role of the Writing Program has had to adapt to new circumstances.  
  • This year our symposium will ask us to look forward and look back in our teaching and research on Writing Studies. How have we adapted and evolved, as teachers and/or as a program? How do we do things differently from other institutions? What are you doing that is new and innovative? What have you brought back?
  • You may want to talk about theory, curricular or course design, assessment, and activity or assignment design. Or, you may want to think about how you connect with our ever-changing student population.
  • We’ll share how we teach, and what we’re teaching and researching, with the opportunity to cover what’s unique about UCSC. Newer faculty can get a sense of the history and legacy of Writing at UCSC.
  • Submissions are welcomed for a variety of formats: short, ten-minute talks; longer twenty-minute talks; poster presentations; or, join us for  noon roundtable discussion of how the UCSC Writing Program has evolved. 

Community Corner:

The community corner features a timely message from the Writing Program DEI Coordinator, Robin King, Faculty Spotlights, Reading and Podcast Recommendations.

First, that important message from Robin King, Writing Program DEI Coordinator:

Dear Writing Program Faculty,

In light of current national moments, here are a few recommendations of culture to remind us and reflect on why thoughtfulness about demographics continues to be important to the social, professional and academic progress of the university. Some of these selections are older (but not outdated as they reclaim history or discuss overlooked social dynamics) and some are new; some are worth a second look if you have already worked with them.

Documentary: Crip Camp; A Disability Revolution (2020), produced by a graduate of UC San Diego.

Video: Manzanar Baseball Field Restoration, a “work-in-progress video journal’’ (2024); produced by an LA artist affiliated with the 18th Street Arts Center.

Podcasts:

• Can We Talk About Whiteness? : NPR One (May 30, 2016)
• 8 Disability Podcasts That Are Well Worth A Listen (April 14, 2022)

Books

• Teaching Resource: Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom (2022), a TLC text included in Project Real
• Fiction: James (2024), an excellent read, given the take on bilingualism and connections to history, literacy and social justice. Reviewed to be superb by many, including Sarah-Hope, if I remember correctly.
• Non Fiction: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground; The Politics of Food in the United States, From the Trail of Tears to School Lunch (2024), “A Groundbreaking history of how the United States Uses Food in Law and Politics as a weapon of colonizations and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter Era”

Articles

• “The 100 Best Protests Songs of All Time” (January 27, 2025)
• “Trump’s Latest Anti-Trans Action and How We Can Fight Back” (January 30, 2025)

TV News Report: Democracy Now – “Infinite Hope”: Angela Davis Speaks at 2025 Peace Ball Ahead of Trump Inauguration (January 20, 2025)

I hope that winter quarter is going well for you all, in spite of recent critical events.

Robin

Faculty Spotlights:

This portion of our community corner features faculty spotlights: images and fun facts about our colleagues. A special thank you to those who participated in this round of faculty spotlights: Robin King, Toby Loeffler, and Alexandra McCourt.

Here are the questions they responded to:

• How long have you been teaching in general?
• When did you start teaching for the Writing Program (Quarter & Year)?
• Have you taught at/do you teach for any other programs here at UCSC besides Writing? For any programs outside of UCSC? 
• What brought you to teaching (in general and/or here at UCSC)? 
• What is your favorite spot here at UCSC? In the world? 
• What do you like to do outside of teaching? 
• Any fun facts about yourself? 
• Do you have any fur, human, or plant babies? 🙂 If so, tell us a little about them.

Robin:

• 35+ years
• Fall quarter 1998, I think. 
• I teach the Oakes College Food Politics series of classes and Summer Bridge. Over the years I have taught a number of EOP/HSI courses and the Faculty Mentorship (research) writing course, as well as W169 and Oakes Core; I taught journalism at Cabrillo College a long time ago.
• When I moved to New Jersey from Pleasant, CA where I had been working in corporate America (Viacom Cable TV), I wanted a change in career. So I applied and was hired to teach writing and mass media at Camden County College. A few years earlier I had taught an evening course at Palomar College, north of San Diego, while I worked days at Southwestern Cable TV as a program coordinator for the public access channel. This juxtaposition of work contexts so soon after graduate school made me consider whether I might be more interested in teaching at a university than spending my days working as a business administrator. 
• At UCSC, it’s a toss up: The Farm and Oakes College Amphitheater. In the world right now: Costa Rica where I spent a lovely week with my extended family in the middle of a rainforest this past year-end holidays. 
• Yoga and going for walks with friends.
• I am known in my neighborhood for growing the best roses (St Joseph’s Coat climbing rose and The Stairway to Heaven climbing rose).
• Two sons and one grand puppy: Drew, 33 years old, partner in an activist consulting organization that works on progressive issues; Reed, 35 years old, intellectual property lawyer for San Jose State University Research Foundation; Reed’s puppy, Calvin, who is 17 months old, mixed-heritage but mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Toby:

• I’ve been teaching for over thirty years now, since 1993, when I began as a graduate student. 
• My first quarter at UCSC was the fall of 2008. 
• I began at UCSC teaching sections of Stevenson College’s core course. After that, I taught College Nine’s core course for many years. 
• Teaching is what I always wanted to do. I had many excellent teacher/mentors when I was younger and they got me started on this path. I actually grew up in Santa Cruz Country but left for college and never really thought that I’d end up returning to teach here. 
• My favorite spot at UCSC is probably the Alan Chadwick Garden. It’s hard to say what my favorite place in the world is, but it might be my garden or any place where my wife is. 
• Other than reading, I like to cook and bake. I’ve been baking bread at least weekly for over 20 years now, mostly sourdough loaves, bagels, and pretzels. I also cycle quite often and have been commuting to campus by bike, rain or shine, for over 16 years. If you’re out early on Saturdays, you might see my wife and me zipping around town on our tandem. 
• My wife and I make hard cider, apple with a touch of quince, yearly. On the first of the year, we bottled about 15 gallons. It’s resting now, and we’ll be testing it out in early March. 
• We don’t have any human babies, but we do have a garden and a small urban orchard of 25 apple trees, mostly heirloom varieties, along with citrus, pear, sour cherry, plum, aprium, and pluot trees as well as enough olallieberry plants to make jam and a pie or two

Alexandra:

• I used to teach for the First Year Writing Program at North Carolina State University and I used to teach English as a Second Language at Durham Technical Community College.
• I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was 5 and I taught my brother how to say his first word (Apple).
• My favorite spot at UCSC is the quad by the humanities lecture hall. I love watching the changing of classes and hearing snippets of conversations from passersby. My favorite place in the world is Glasgow.
• I make homemade mead and I love to cook with my daughter and nieces .
• I speak Portuguese (even though I sound like a gringa lol), I can relate everything back to Grey’s Anatomy, I used to be a pharmacy technician.
• I have a daughter, Marya Eduarda. She’s 12 and the best human being I’ve ever known. I have two nieces, Emelia, 3, and Giulia, 2, and they call me Titi.
• I am working on developing my theoretical framework for a case study proposing the correlation between attendance and performance in writing classrooms post-pandemic. If you are interested in learning more about my framework, or would potentially like to pilot the framework, please email me and we can talk about it more. I will send an announcement out towards the end of the quarter, as well.

Reading Recommendations:

Do you remember that Google form I sent out at the beginning of this quarter? Well, in addition to soliciting memes/gifs, I also made the following requests:

• Is there a short review of something you recently read or a short summary of a workshop you recently attended?
• Maybe you didn’t recently read something or attend a workshop, but you listened to a podcast that was particularly enlightening. Feel free to share the title of the episode here!
• Finally, perhaps there is a new teaching tool that you think we, your life-long-learner WP colleagues would love to read and learn about and/or attempt to implement in the classroom, let us know!

Thanks to Dev for the following reading recommendation for a review from The Washington Post for the book, All Fours by Miranda July.

Podcast Recommendations:

Thanks to Dev and Brij for sharing their podcast recommendations. And a special shout-out to Roxi Power on her podcast, “The Hive Poetry Collective”! Roxi shares that her “most recent show discusses the anthology [she] just co-edited that was published last month, Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election. We’ll have some upcoming launches: San Francisco 3/1, Los Angeles 3/7; Bookshop Santa Cruz, 4/1; Satori Arts Santa Cruz, 4/25. All at 7pm.)”

You can find additional recommendations below:

• From Dev: The Pedagogue Podcast: “Pedagogue is a podcast about teachers talking writing hosted by Shane Wood.”

• From Brij: 
  • Babbage The Economist’s podcast on tech has a good episode critical of AI.  (I didn’t know they spell it “sceptical” across the pond)
  • East Bay Yesterday: “a podcast about yesterday that’s not stuck in the past”; a very well-researched and produced podcast about Oakland, Berkeley, etc., that focuses on everything from the Key System trains that used to run to SF, to the Lesbian Archives, to KPFA, to the Berkeley City Dump (where I used to marvel at “the pit”).  The stories are multilayered and entertaining.  E.g., who knew one African American family from Oklahoma ran the Berkeley City dump? 
  • The Economics of Everyday Things  from Freakanomics Radio: “Who decides which snacks are in your office’s vending machine? How much is a suburban elm tree worth, and to whom?  How did Girl Scout Cookies become a billion-dollar business? In bite-sized episodes, journalist Zachary Crockett looks at quotidian things and finds amazing stories.”

Teaching Tools:

• Identifying Types of Information (new library instruction module)
  • From Sheila Garcia-Mazzari (via Brij): The second library module, Identifying Types of Information, is now live on Canvas and can be directly embedded into any course. Along with the full module, I also uploaded 8 separate learning objects. These learning objects are all contained within the module but have been uploaded separately to allow instructors to mix and match content for their courses. 
  • The learning objects include 2 videos, 2 handouts, 1 interactive scenario, 2 review quizzes, and 1 interactive tool. I’ve linked each of these below. The resources that do not have a preview available were created with Articulate software but will work smoothly once embedded into a course. Please let me know if you have any questions at any time!
  • Identifying Types of Information Module 
  • Researching California Wildfires (Video)
  • Methods for Determining if a Source is Peer-Reviewed (Video)
  • Characteristics of Scholarly and Popular Sources (Handout)
  • A Quick Overview of Primary and Secondary Sources (Handout)
  • Understanding the Peer Review Process (Interactive Scenario)
  • Identifying Scholarly and Popular Sources (Quiz/Review)
  • Identifying Primary and Secondary Sources (Quiz/Review)
  • Is My Source Primary or Secondary? (Interactive Tool)
  • Sheila Garcia Mazari shargarc@ucsc.edu
  • *The first item included all the following ones and can be directly imported into your Canvas course page and edited if need be. 
  • Reminder: Shelia’s first module, Examining Bias in Sources of Information (Full Module) is also available on Canvas Commons. 
• Powernotes: A shout-out from Dev Bose for this tool.
• From Heather: Public Domain Image Archive:
  • After the hundreds (thousands?) of hours trawling through online image collections since the PDR’s inception, we’ve decided it was time to create one of our own! We are really excited to share with you the launch of our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse.
  • While The Public Domain Review primarily takes the form of an “arts journal,” it has also quietly served as a digital art gallery, albeit one fractured across essays and collections posts. The PDIA sets out to emphasise this visual nature of the PDR, freeing these images from their textual homes and placing them front and centre for easier discovery, comparison, and appreciation. Our aim is to offer a platform that will serve both as a practical resource and a place to simply wander — an ever-growing portal to discover more than 2000 years of visual culture.
  • We intend the archive to be a place of discovery, and to this end have developed various “views” to aid exploration:
    • catalogue view, to search and browse by theme, style, date, and more;
    • infinite view, for a more immersive experience of the collection;
    • shuffle view, a tool to easily summon images in a serendipitous manner.
  • And with more ways to visualise the collection to come.
  • Whether you’re a researcher, an artist, a designer, or simply a lover of old images, we hope you find the PDIA to be a source of inspiration and delight. Explore, download, and create to your heart’s content!

What Do You Meme?

Welcome to the silly send-off section: the memes. Enjoy!

Some context: this quarter I’m teaching W1 on the M, W, and F schedule. After the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and that other thing that took place that day, I came to Wednesday’s class a bit unsure how to hold space for students–if they even wanted that option.

I did so and in my style, meaning, with memes. The memes helped diffuse the deep sense of despair several students were feeling. I even had a few students check in with me after class to share how they had been avoiding any news, social media, and other updates. One student shared that they didn’t even want to laugh or give additional attention to that person’s ascension to the throne but, at the end of the week, they wanted to share a bright spot in the dark. 

In the memes that follow, the first is from the aforementioned student. The second is from Maggie Amis, the third is from Robin King, and the third is from Dev Bose. Thanks for sharing the memes, y’all, and helping to bring about some joy. 

From student: 

From Maggie: “there is plenty of reason to be upset but when those times arise, I need something to change my frame of mind so I can do something about it. This gif/meme (as the case may be) does that for me.”

From Robin:

From Dev:

I hope you smiled and maybe some of you even laughed. Whatever your position on the happiness spectrum, I wish you a lovely long weekend and I hope you can enjoy the break from the rain while it lasts!

Welcome to the fall 2024 edition of our program’s blog, “The Rhetorical Situation”!

My name is Lara and this year marks my second working with the Teaching Team. I’ll be publishing the blog this academic year along with the help of my Teaching Team pals Brenda, Brij, and Ellen.

Before we get to any updates this quarter, I would like to extend a special thank you to the incomparable, creative, brilliant, and kind Lisa Schilz, whose work on the blog I would always look forward to. Lisa’s work created a fun reason to press pause on work to learn about our wonderful colleagues, mark our calendars for important dates for conferences, workshops, or trainings, and to get a great reading (or listening) recommendation from a group of pretty cool humans. Thank you for all your work in curating all of this information that has stitched our community together, Lisa! The Teaching Team and I will be working hard to create an enjoyable break for you from whatever with this blog. We hope you like it!

IMPORTANT DATES TO KEEP IN MIND

• Learning about “Ungrading”: TLC is organizing an Ungrading learning community in winter 2025. Participants will attend three sessions (Wednesdays 2:30-4:00 p.m. in TLC Lab at McHenry, on January 22, February 12, and March 5). You can learn more about this learning community here. Fill out the interest form by December 13.
• Writing Program Symposium previously known as the “mini conference” to take place on Friday, April 18, 2025.

Welcome to our Writing Program Community Corner: a place to find moments of connection, opportunities to connect with other faculty and campus community members, and reminders of upcoming community-building events.

• DEI RESOURCES (From Robin): A campus-wide DEI Resource List for the Writing Program is in the works! For now, please be aware that you are invited to join any campus-wide faculty community, development and support groups. These groups meet regularly and are funded by the CP/EVC    with a goal of engaging and creating conversation among faculty across  ranks and disciplines to improve faculty retention and success. Below you will find contact information for the current affinity groups that are open to interested faculty: 
  • Academic Mothers (chaired by Lindsey Dillon, lidillon@ucsc.edu)
  • Asian American/Pacific Islander (chaired by L.S. Kim, lskim@ucsc.edu)
  • Black (co-chaired by Courtney Bonam, cbonam@ucsc.edu and Myriam Telus, mtelus@ucsc.edu)
  • Disabilities & Chronic Illness (chaired by Megan Moodie, mmoodie@ucsc.edu)                                           
  • Indigenous (chaired by Katie Keliiaa, ckeliiaa@ucsc.edu)
  • Latinx/Chicanx (chaired by Alegra Eroy-Reveles, alegraer@ucsc.edu)
  • LGBTQ+ (chaired by Phil Hammack, hammack@ucsc.edu)
  • Women in STEM (chaired by Rebecca Braslau, rbraslau@ucsc.edu)
• The Don Rothman Awards Ceremony took place last Friday, December 6 via Zoom. It was first time having the chance to attend and I’m here to affirm what the Rothman Committee and Amy have continued to say: “it’s an incredibly heartwarming way to celebrate the end of the term, with evidence of excellent writing and pedagogy within the Writing Program!” It was such a privilege to listen to these students read their work, hear from their loved ones, and from their faculty mentors: Dina El Dessouky, Lindsay Knisely, and Brij Lunine. Actual image of me tearing up after listening to Dina introduce her student, Roberto Lopez, and then hearing his essay, “Staircases of Longing: The Fear of Change”:

• Teaching Circles: The Teaching Team is pleased to invite you to join another round of Teaching Circles for Winter 2025. You can see the description in the survey, but most important to know is that this is a non-evaluative opportunity for sharing and receiving insights into our work and enjoying a chance to build a community around our work, whether it be challenges, triumphs or goals.  If you have any questions, contact Ellen Newberry (esnberry@ucsc.edu).

• Survey Responses: What follows are responses to a survey I sent to WP faculty on Monday, November 25. I asked everyone the following questions:
  • How have you been holding space for the major political and social changes we’ve experienced this quarter–as educators, citizens, and people?
  • What’s brought you joy about this new academic year?
  • What have you been reading?
  • What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced this quarter?
  • What’s been the most pleasant surprise you’ve had this quarter (inside/outside/beyond the classroom)?
  • Are you setting any intentions (academic and/or personal) for the new year? What are they?

• RIDING THE WAVES AND HOLDING SPACE BY:
  • Processing with friends and neighbors
  • As Chair, I have been trying to create spaces for faculty to share their ideas and feelings, and I have worked to avoid acting like I have “the answers” (both because I don’t, and because if I thought I did that still wouldn’t be all that helpful)
  • Slumping into borderline depression and digging into work to keep myself from focusing on the next four years. 
  • Keeping in touch with my online network of activist friends.
  • Trying to come up with(and help make happen) community events that are productive and heartening—and that let us give voice to this moment.
  • Listening to Ralph Nader, Robin D.G Kelly and Bernie Sanders
  • A final formal project for W2: assigning students to write auto-ethnographies about social justice and/or trauma.
  • Lots of small and big group check-ins with students around reading NYT news including exercises from Joanna Macy’s book, Active Hope, which helps with both the election and climate change. 
  • In one section, our shares brought forth surprising revelations about the kinds of “manosphere” podcasts several students listen to (Joe Rogan et al.) and how it got them excited about the candidate who won. 
  • I do hold space for any position to be expressed. Privately, I didn’t feel safe then adjusted the exercise so other students who may not have felt safe could decide what to share.

• SILVER-LININGS (LIGHT IN THE CRACKS): 
  • My students–they’ve been lovely this quarter.
  • Expanding my friend circle, both within and outside of UCSC, has been something that is finally coming to fruition and bringing me joy.
  • I’m teaching Merrill Core this year, as I usually do. The Provost and one of our faculty put in a ton of work over the summer to update/streamline/rethink the course, and the changes are great.
  • Working on the Rothman committee! Meeting with Online Reading Group!
  • Experiencing the activism of some of my students who poured themselves into writing postcards.
  • My 3 pet ducks are as fat and sassy as ever.

• BOOKWORM VIBES (WHAT WE’RE READING): 
  • Too many political articles and posts! I need to stop doom scrolling!
  • I’ve been steadily working my way through everything Miriam Toews has written. She’s very dark and VERY funny (except Women Talking, which is inexplicably her most famous book).
  • Best reads in the last few months: Straight Acting by Tosh; Season of the Swamp by Herrera; Lightborne by Phillips; The Cautious Traveler’s Guide to the Wastelands by Brooks; The Sons of El Rey by Espinoza; A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Lemebel; You Dreamed of Empires by Enrigue; Ours by Williams; Wandering Stars by Orange; James by Everett; The Mars House by Pulley; Martyr! by Akbar.
  • Mediocre thrillers and stuff about neuroscience.
  • Too much New York Times. Also, books of poetry by poets I interview on the Hive Poetry Collective podcast. Recently, Excursive by Elizabeth Robinson; The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars by Marc Vincenz; Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander.
  • I’ve been working my way through Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen mystery stories.

• CHALLENGES:
  • The biggest challenge has been trying to talk to my son (12 years old) about a possible, then a real, Trump presidency.
  • My absolute despair about the direction our country is headed and how many vulnerable people are going to pay a crazy price for the pleasure some people take in the ‘luxury’ of hating.
  • Teaching W2 during fall quarter for the first time in years (decades?). Thanks to colleagues who suggested that the quality of writing is weak probably because many students are retake W2 in the fall after failing it at least once
  • Other than hearing I need spinal fusion surgery… in class, students who don’t show up for class then write asking for ways they can make up [for] the absence. We only meet 10 times in a hybrid class, so it’s like teaching lots of individual classes. In general, this cohort is having a hard time reading guidelines and doing the work. The pandemic generation?
  • Discovering all the creative new ways students are using AI to do their work for them.

• PLEASANT SURPRISES:
  • The little box of chocolates from North Carolina that my wife gave me for by b’day. She ordered it because she wanted to do some spending in that region after the hurricane. They arrived very late b/c hurricane and collapse of infrastructure, but they were delicious—especially the chocolate stout truffle ones.
  • Reconnecting with an old friend.
  • I had to cut down this huge oak tree in my yard, which I truly loved. (It was diseased and dangerous.) In response, a pineapple guava tree got a LOT more sun and starting blooming like crazy. Also, this week, two rose bushes that are newly sunned are also having their first-ever fall blooms (they previously only bloomed in the summer).
  • New information about demographics and cultures of students at UC Santa Cruz from reading their auto-ethnographies.
  • Being invited to co-edit an anthology of poetry, Winter in America (Again) with poems responding to the election.
  • When a sold-out hotel in Palo Alto messed up my hotel reservation and I ended up sleeping on a cot in an “emergency” room, the hotel manager fully refunded the $800+ room charge when I complained.

• NEW YEAR INTENTIONS:
  • I don’t think I’m there yet. Last year my intention/resolution was to watch more Nicolas Cage movies, and I did that (though I could do more!). I plan to come up with something equally silly for 2025.
  • Eat fruits and vegetables, take walks, don’t live too much inside my mind, keep working to see beauty and give thanks.
  • My intention is to not get so busy, as I did this quarter, that I stop attending yoga class multiple times a week.
  • Spending time with my daughter before she graduates from high school. Lots of physical therapy and health management to prep for spine surgery. Continuing to try–not easy–to simplify my courses to accommodate the new cohort of students who are struggling. Trying to find time over winter break to work on my book. Being thankful for community to face the coming political changes.
  • Keep a list of every book I read in 2025.

• Faculty Profiles: The Teaching Team is continuing with the tradition established by the Pedagogy Development Committee (PDC) where Lisa Schilz would send along Google forms to solicit questions from new and continuing faculty. This quarter, to facilitate a smooth transition to the Teaching Team taking point on sharing faculty profiles, Brenda Sanfilippo, and I, Lara Galas, have participated in our version of the survey to share some “fun facts” about ourselves. I look forward to reaching out to WP faculty to get your responses for next quarter’s introductions. Here are the questions Brenda and I responded to:
  • How long have you been teaching in general?
  • When did you start teaching for the Writing Program (Quarter & Year)?
  • Have you taught at/do you teach for any other programs here at UCSC besides Writing? For any programs outside of UCSC? 
  • What brought you to teaching (in general and/or here at UCSC)? 
  • What is your favorite spot here at UCSC? In the world? 
  • What do you like to do outside of teaching? 
  • Any fun facts about yourself? 
  • Do you have any fur, human, or plant babies? 🙂 If so, tell us a little about them. 

• Brenda:
  • Since 2003, when I was a graduate student teaching German at UCLA.
  • I was a GSI for Writing 2 beginning in 2012. I became a Lecturer in fall 2014.
  • I teach American war literature classes; a class on supporting student veterans for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and a writing workshop for the Dickens Day of Writing every year.
  • Initially, I needed to support myself in graduate school and after I completed my PhD. I wanted to keep teaching because I love learning and love being in a community of learners.
  • I love to travel. My favorite spots to travel are Japan, Bora Bora, and Paris. I am happy anywhere in the Monterey Bay area.
  • I love the Golden State Warriors and watching K-dramas. I also really love musicals.
  • I used to be a singer when I was much younger. In high school, I sang the National Anthem with a small group at a Dodgers game. I lived in Italy for several years. I love learning languages. I’ve studied German, Italian, French, Russian, and am now working on Korean and Japanese.
  • Yes, I have two children. Noah is 17 and Charlotte is 8. I also have a yellow Labrador named Arrow. I’ve been married for 21 years.

• Lara:
  • I’ve been teaching since the fall 2016 quarter as a GSI for the Writing Program–where does the time go?!
  • Since the fall quarter of 2017, I also taught at the core course for Cowell College until last year. I’m now full-time with WP–yay!
  • I always share with my students that despite my enthusiasm as their instructor, I didn’t always want to teach. In fact, I started my PhD program thinking I was going to lead a lovely and solitary life in the archives. And, then, I started being a TA. In the fall 2013 quarter, I was a TA for a nineteenth-century American fiction course–something right in my wheelhouse of interests. Learning from the more experienced TAs–and the professor–but, especially the TAs–I fell in love with teaching. In fact, our own Lisa Schilz, whose praises I’ve already sung with her mad blogging skills, was one of those experienced TAs who never hesitated helping out a fellow grad student. I was so inspired by her wisdom and passion for teaching. I learned how to take up space in front of the classroom facilitating conversations and learning with students–something I’ve never forgotten. Thank you, Lisa! 😭 
  • This campus has SO MANY of my favorite spots like the Oakes College Mural Room, the Gloria Anzaldúa study room and altar in McHenry Library, and the rock garden in Pogonip. I’m from UT so I’m always up for exploring desert and mountain spaces. I also love to travel and hold several places from around the world close to my heart like the Reading Room at the British Library, the Plaza de las Tres Culturas en Tlatelolco, Mexico City, and a remote spot at Machu Picchu where I cried tears of gratitude for surviving my 3-day trek and tapping into my inner strength.
  • I have an-almost 5-year-old cat named Sammy after my brilliant and kind undergrad mentor, Dr. Wilfred Samuels. The name is the only thing that connects these two because Sammy the cat, while perhaps brilliant, is mostly mischievous, cuddly on his terms, and always down to trick you into rubbing his belly so he can give you a “love bite.” 
  • I also enjoy tending to my little potted herb garden with lavender, cilantro, rosemary, and oregano. I also have two indoor plants–my office plant, which I realize now has no name, and Doña Pelos (yes, Mrs. Hairs), who brightens the corner of my living room with her full beautiful palm leaves.

Did you know there’s an entire UCSC website dedicated to Sammy the Slug illustrations? Well, now you do and that’s where I got the images to decorate our community corner; I hope you enjoyed them!

This section of the blog, Teaching Tools, offers resources for you within and beyond the classroom. If you have a tool that you’d like to share, please email me (lgalas@ucsc.edu) the name of the resource, a description of it and how you use it, and anything else you think we need to know about the resource.

• DesignPlus (From Heather): Are you feeling like your Canvas is a little boring? Is everyone sick of the vertical scroll? Do you need a fast and easy way to make updates? Check out this new tool!

• More on DesignPlus from Heather:
  • To create this page in Canvas, I (Heather) adapted a premade DesignPlus template. The result is a summary/schedule Canvas homepage with links to key aspects of the course. At the bottom is an accordion menu (not expanded in the image) that lists the work due that week and links students to those assignments. Every Friday, I replace this page with a new one. That way, when students click on “home” in Canvas, they are offered immediate context for their upcoming work. 
  • DesignPlus is far easier to use than the normal Canvas interface. Easy-to-add features like accordion menus allow students to control the amount of information they see at one time—helpful with lists or text-heavy pages. And DesignPlus helpfully prompts me to attend to accessibility issues like heading levels and alt text. 
  • I and a few other people attended several hour-long training sessions in June 2024 (available here). These lessons were immediately applicable—so much so that I was able to use them to quickly spruce up my Canvas shell ahead of the start of Summer Session. I highly recommend it!If you want to learn more about DesignPlus, here is the cidilabs website and Themes Gallery. You can also reach out to Dana Conard (dconard@ucsc.edu) at UCSC for assistance or ask faculty who are using it, like Heather, Brenda, Terry, and Taylor.

• Teaching Workshop Write-Up (From Brenda):
• In October, Robin Dunkin, Noori Chai, and Roxanna Villalobos of the Teaching and Learning Center presented a timely workshop on “Preparing for Critical Current Events in the Classroom.” 
• Critical current events can bring up feelings of fear and anxiety in both faculty and students, making it difficult to teach and learn. The workshop focused on ways to respond to hot moments and difficult conversation as well as how we can show up for each other as a community.
• If recent events have made you anxious in the classroom, please check out the workshop materials. You can access the workshop slides, resources page, and other materials in the Google Folder here. There is also a TLC page on difficult conversations.

What do you meme?

This last section of the blog–What do you meme?–is a place dedicated to silly fun in the form of memes. My hope is that in the future the next blog writer will fill the space with their version of silly fun. 

One icebreaker I’ve used with students is asking them to bring in their favorite memes, printing them out, posting them on the walls around the classroom and asking them to stand by their favorite memes. Then, I ask them to discuss what’s funny about it–and, as we progress through the quarter–I ask what they think the rhetorical situation of their meme is. I hope this anecdote underscores the importance of learning via play. 

Anyway, enough of my thoughts, here’s the meme that changed my life by lighting a fire under my butt one quarter. Thanks to Amy for sending it along and forever changing my relationship to grading! (See, memes are powerful means of communication!)

Be on the lookout for another Google form from yours truly asking you for your favorite teaching/learning/education-themed memes. 

Bring on the laughs and we wish you all the best of luck as we wrap up this quarter and this year! Peace out, 2024!