Are We There Yet? (Post) Mid-Quarter Musings

A screen grab from the 1991 film, Point Break, showing actors Keanue Reeves and Patrick Swayze in a meme with the words, "Bruh do you think the ocean is salty because the land never waves back?" above them in the image. — A screen grab from the 1991 film, *Point Break*, showing actors Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze in a meme with the words, “Bruh do you think the ocean is salty because the land never waves back?” above them in the image.

Welcome:

Here we are in the middle of May and perhaps we’re delightedly awaiting summer’s arrival. Perhaps, if you’re like me, you’re wondering if summer is really going to happen. Fun will out? Fingers crossed.

We’ve already had so many events, talks, meetings, Google forms, and, of course, emails, flooding our inboxes for the last 7 weeks of this spring quarter. Fear not, weary reader, this issue of the blog features some important dates, a few faculty spotlights (thank you to EVERYONE who has participated and submitted responses), teaching tools, and a roundup of memes, gifs, book reviews/recommendations, and podcast recommendations.

As usual, I have nothing but gratitude for the Teaching Team homies for their support, insights, and contributions to the blog.

Pa’lante,

Lara

Important Dates:

Final faculty meeting: IN PERSON on Tuesday, May 27; important to highlight the earlier start time (11:45 AM) and a later ending time (1:15 PM)
“Up for Review 2025-2026” on Thursday, May 29, 12-1 pm via Zoom.

Community Corner:

For this version of the Faculty Spotlight, I’m delighted to share responses from Daniel, Lindsay, Chris, and Derede. If you would like to be featured, complete the “Faculty Spotlight Google Form.” If not, I’m sure a member of the Teaching Team will be contacting you in the near future.

Questions folks 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.

Daniel

A little over a decade.
The fateful quarter: winter 2020.
Yes—I’m part of Kresge College’s faculty.
Enthusiasm for people and texts! Teaching is one of the few places where these two enthusiasms can converge—like a cheat code for overcoming the solitary, sometimes suffocatingly quiet aspects of reading and writing.
At UCSC: the Student Media Press Center! There is so much cool stuff happening there—particular shout-out to City on a Hill Press—and I’m always so awed by the amount of energy and thought coursing through that space. Plus there’s a lovely patio there. In the world? The particularly swimmable section of Bay at Aquatic Park in San Francisco.
I’m easy: I like to read, write, see friends, watch movies, listen to music.
This certainly doesn’t constitute a “fun fact,” but this field is the best place to say that I have a bottomless appetite for recommendations of any kind, so please send: books, records, perfumes…
Yes! I have an adorable dog who makes a quarterly Zoom cameo in my hybrid courses.

Lindsay

I started teaching in 1996, when I was a sophomore in college and taught a sexual health and peer counseling course to other undergrads. I continued teaching poetry, composition, and social justice classes when I was getting my MFA, and I loved it. I have been teaching Core at Oakes College since 2004.
Spring 2007
Longtime Oakes College faculty; have also taught at Rachel Carson College
I love facilitating dialogue–especially when the conversation is about challenging issues that matter to people. I think reading and writing are key to developing empathy, and that this keen understanding of others is what it takes to change our world for the better. I have a deep curiosity about the minds and lives of others, and teaching writing allows me to gain insight into other people’s thoughts and feelings. And I come from a strong tradition in my family and culture that emphasizes the importance of contributing to our communities and enriching the lives of others in our work.
At UCSC: the quarry lagoon by Hagar Meadow, off Quarry Lane, which probably has a formal name that I don’t know! In the world: at home or at my uncle’s place on Lake Ontario in upstate New York.
Hang out with my family, read, go for hikes, eat frequent celebratory meals with friends and family, laugh uproariously at shows and movies, travel, swim in any body of water, and cuddle with our new kittens.
This spring I’m spending almost every weekend traveling around the Bay Area cheering for my son’s travel baseball team–see photo below at a tournament his team recently won! During baseball season, he has a practice or game almost every day, and sometimes three times per day, so it’s been an opportunity for me to learn a lot about baseball and build connections. I can proudly say that after watching him play baseball for ten years, I can now tell the difference between a passed ball and a wild pitch.
My son Jonah is going to start high school in August and plays any and all ball sports. We have been playing lots of ping-pong in our backyard, and maybe I will beat him sometime this summer, but I doubt it. My daughter Talia is a fourth grader at Monarch and makes incredible art all day long. She draws and also creates detailed miniature gardens, homes, and clothes for an array of tiny toy creatures. She does roller derby and is really fun to watch on four wheels! We also have two six-month-old kittens who are bringing a lot of joy to the family with their goofy antics and loud purring.
Check out Lindsay’s website: www.lindsayknisely.com
We are traveling to Japan in June and I am very excited to eat a chocolate Totoro cream puff with my daughter. If anyone has recommendations for favorite things to do in Tokyo or Kyoto, please send them to me.

Chris

In one capacity or another, since I was 16, though that was with babies so it was a whole lot more play than it was teaching.
Fall 2021
I taught Oakes Core for five years.
Both of my parents were teachers and it just always seemed like what I wanted to do. And, when I was a student at UCSC in the late 1900s I thought it would be a great place to teach. Somehow the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune brought me here.
My favorite spot at UCSC is the crest of the bike path looking down over the bay. I am prone to sentimentia, which makes my favorite places in the world an unreliable opinion, but for now I’ll say the banks of the Hudson north of 125th street looking west.
I surf, I write, I read, I work on cars, and like to learn how to fix and make things.
I’m colorblind and I rollerskated across Europe with five friends in the summer of 2003. It was the most free I have ever felt.
An interview with my teacher Lucie, in which she defines, among other things, “sentimentia,” “irrinois,” “The Santicomnium,” and “The Pandamonium.”
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69885/qa-lucie-brock-broido

Derede

40 years!
Fall 2000
Various Colleges — Stevenson, Cowell, C9 for one or two years. None lately.
I love having a bird’s-eye-view of people (or animals) learning, discovering, practicing new skills. (For decades, I also trained dogs in my spare time.)
Anything in the redwoods! Or sitting on Stevenson hill or Cowell plaza looking down at the coast and the ocean. We have the most beautiful campus in the world, I think! So, same answer for both. :->
Since 2019 or so, I’ve become a bit of a climate activist. The climate situation is so serious, and it’s no accident Trump is targeting not only DEI but climate research. To really address the climate, we need to address racism, corporatism (including the corporate university!), capitalism. Moving to fix — or even, simply to disclose the problems with — these fundamental cornerstones our society is scary to Trump and his ilk. We all do our part to protect the vulnerable and open people’s eyes to what’s going on: the climate angle is just my way in to the conversation.
See above! (Not sure it’s “fun,” however!)
My husband and I have three Belgian Shepherds. At one point, when we had really “gone to the dogs,” we had seven! We’ve come to our senses since then, though.

Teaching Tools:

What follows in our Teaching Tools section is a write-up of the Fourth Annual Writing Program Teaching Symposium and Cristina Cedillo’s talk, “Difficult Conversations and the Teaching of Writing.” Brij and Brenda have also included slides and tools from each event. Enjoy!

Fourth Annual Writing Program Teaching Symposium

The fourth annual symposium took place on Zoom on Friday, 18 April 2025. Writing Program faculty presented on their teaching and research on a variety of topics. Whether it was the principal focus or ancillary, a number of talks covered the welfare of UCSC students. Kimberly Helmer’s “Teaching the Happiness Project: Rethinking Rigor” covered wellness practices in the classroom, focus group interviews, and several innovative, integrative assignments. Lindsay Knisely continued her successful focus on “Fostering Belonging in the College Writing Classroom.” She explained why it’s important for instructors to do so, how we can better foster belonging, and three effective interventions. In a related vein, Lara Galas shared her practice, rationale, and successes documented in her assessment of “Creating Community by Reading Together.” And Alexandra McCourt presented on “Abolishing Attendance: A Theoretical Framework for Anti-Carceral Pedagogy in College Composition Classrooms Post COVID-19.” Combining theory of the carceral function of attendance with her recent approach, she argued for an “attendance social contract.” The other talk that focused on wellbeing and practice was Tanner WouldGo’s “Ungrading + Interdependence,” which showed how to alleviate anxiety around grading while supporting students to do their best. Tanner focused on requiring students to ask for help, interdependence, rolling deadlines, and formative feedback.

Other presentations covered Canvas design, digital literacy, and international teaching partnerships. Brenda Sanfilippo’s “‘Minimum 37 Pieces of Flair’: Re-Designing Canvas for Engagement and Learning” showed us how we can make our Canvas pages far more accessible as well as very visually appealing. Joseph Navarro presented on his work covering “The Digital Short and Academic Discourse.” He covered the pedagogical framework and academic discourse centered around digital literacy. Finally, Mark Baker and Angelica Carvalho Di Maio, from the Institute of Geosciences at Federal Fluminense University, presented on their partnership facilitated through UCSC’s Global Engagement. It was inspiring to see how well-planned and executed this partnership was and how well it worked for students in both Santa Cruz and Niterói, Brazil.

The other part of the symposium was a panel discussion on the evolution of the Writing Program. The panel included emeriti Roz Spafford & Ginny Draper; current faculty Ellen Newberry, Tiffany Wong, Madeline Lane, Phil Longo, Tina Osborne, and Taylor Kirsch, with Brij Lunine moderating. Roz described her time at UCSC from 1978 to 2006 as WP chair, Provost of Rachel Carson College, and coordinator of what was our journalism program. Ginny spoke about writing in the colleges, her leadership and publication on writing across the curriculum, training and coordinating tutors, and both talked about the history and genesis of the WP. Topics covered the Subject A requirement to Directed Self Placement, UCSC’s narrative performance evaluations in lieu of grades, pedagogical approaches to composition, and the growth of UCSC in terms of being a Hispanic Serving Institution, having more first-generation students, and the influx of international students. At least these were the topics I planned for in what was an informative, informal discussion with the goal of giving newer faculty a sense of our history while bringing Roz and Ginny up to date. Thank you very much to all the participants! You made it work.

Thanks to everyone who participated and attended the entire symposium. It was heartening to see the caring, innovative work we do! –Brij

Folder with submitted slides.

Christina Cedillo, “Difficult Conversations and the Teaching of Writing”

Earlier this month, Robin King, our WP DEI Coordinator, arranged a Zoom presentation with Christina V. Cedillo, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Professor Cedillo’s work frequently explores the intersections of rhetoric, disability, and race, with particular attention to how storytelling can push back against erasure.

Professor Cedillo’s talk was on “Difficult Conversations and the Teaching of Writing in the Post-Inauguration Era.” She presented research on the post-2016 “Trump effect” and its negative impacts on learning and classroom community.

International, undocumented, and LGBTQ+ students–especially those multiple marginalized–reported increased discrimination, barriers to learning, lack of support, and bullying. As Professor Cedillo noted, these students are increasingly struggling to engage.

One major message in the talk: even though we can see actual, concrete, harmful presidential orders and policies, the more insidious thing is the xenophobia and Othering. We as teachers can make critical interventions here by teaching students how to make critical use of media, providing specific and explicit support, and reducing as many barriers to learning as we can.

Here are the slides and breakout room sample materials from the presentation and workshop:

If you would like to read more of Professor Cedillo’s work, here are a few Teaching Team favorites:

“What Does It Mean to Move?: Race, Disability, and Critical Embodiment Pedagogy.” Composition Forum, vol. 39, 2018.
#DisabilityTooWhite: On Erasure’s Material and Physical Dimensions.” Spark: A 4C4Equality Journal, vol. 4, 2022 Special Issue: “Liberation Happens When We All Get Free, or, Disability Justice Academia Isn’t,” Ada Hubrig, ed., https://sparkactivism.com/disabilitytoowhite/

What Do You Meme?:

In this section of our blog, we have responses from Sarah-Hope, Dina, Kiva, Alexandra, and Brij. They have shared a list of favorite reads, memes, gifs, praise for Zadie Smith’s essay, “Speaking in Tongues,” and podcast recommendation. I hope you’re able to crack a smile on this Friday afternoon. And, fear not, there will be another chance to contribute to the blog for our final edition.

Sarah-Hope: My Favorite Reads This Year

Dina: