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.
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