Robin Ball, Molecular and Cell Biology
"Medical Racism Discussions: Bringing anti-racism pedagogy into the STEM classroom"
Covid-19 exposed the inequities inherent in our medical system that arise from biases and racist policies. It is important to teach biology students about medical racism, so they do not continue to perpetuate these stereotypes in their future healthcare careers. I designed a semester-long discussion assignment in my Introduction to Human Physiology course to introduce students to medical racism through readings and guided asynchronous discussions. Each discussion topic relates to the physiology we are covering that week. For example, when we learn about the kidneys, students read about the unscientific “race-correction” that is used to estimate kidney function and the consequences for the health of Black patients. Survey results revealed that students appreciated learning this material in a science course and their thoughts about race and biology shifted, with only 6% believing that there are physiological differences between races by the end of the semester.
Explore my teaching website here!
Jennifer Cho, English
“Student/Citizen: Enhancing Diversity Literacy in the Writing Classroom”
My project sets out to identify modes of improving literacy around issues of diversity, equity, and social justice in the composition classroom. I ask how students and instructors’ explicit and implicit biases and our own social positionalities might inform our reception to and interpretation of literary texts, while developing strategies that encourage students to participate in discussions around racism, white supremacy, and other forms of systemic oppression with safety and support. In addition, I am interested in compiling a resource for instructors who are committed to incorporating diversity and anti-racism initiatives in their writing pedagogies.
Kenneth Wong, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies
“Social Justice & Social Media: Raising Critical Awareness & Community Engagement Among Language Learners”
In 2018, Reuters published a story titled "Why Facebook is losing the war on hate speech in Myanmar," showing how hate speech on social media is posing a threat to the Rohingyas, a Mulsim minority in western Burma. With the recent military coup in Burma, Facebook and other social media platforms play a different role, allowing the protesters to spread their pro-democracy messages with viral memes.
In Burmese 100B (Spring 2021), students study the puns and deliberate misspellings in the anti-coup memes, and interview native Burmese speakers in their social circles for the definition of hate speech. In doing so, students learn not only the target language but how recent events reshape language usage in a society.
Explore my teaching website here! This LTF project website is developed in collaboration with Karen Llagas.
Vesna Rodic, French
“Teaching Reading and Writing in L2 Through a Multiliteracies Approach”
This talk focuses on strategies that emphasize the link between reading and writing processes in Advanced French courses. Using the multiliteracies framework (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000) and its chief segments (situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice), I designed a series of activities that provide ongoing opportunities for collaborative student work on the reading and writing processes while studying forms of analytical writing in French. These strategies involve both individual and group work on texts and encourage group work as well as student-to-student engagement. At the same time, they help students get familiarized with the research process and the use of technologies and tools that support research and collaborative tasks.
Rose Carmen Goldberg, Berkeley Law
“Op-Ed Writing Pedagogy: Helping Students Find and Amplify Their Voices”
The power of opinion is concentrated with a narrow and privileged set of voices. The vast majority of op-eds are written by men and the data on race are no better. This Lecturer Teaching Fellow project will help diversify public discourse by developing a publicly available op-ed writing pedagogy tool. Op-eds are especially important now, as society grapples with overlapping crises and ethical conundrums. Students, faculty, and community members of all backgrounds and disciplines have much to contribute to these conversations.
Explore my teaching website here!
Carmen Acevedo Butcher, College Writing Program
“Inclusive Language as Praxis, Not Checklist”
This LTF project sparks dialogue on small ways to make powerful, influential changes in our communication with each other and with students. It engages us in approaches that give us all new ways to be aware of language used in our pedagogy, and to mindfully practice listening actively and using words more thoughtfully, with a people-first mindset. As Awaken CEO Michelle Kim teaches, “I implore [people] to stop asking for the list of words to memorize and instead, think of inclusive language as an *APPROACH* and an ongoing *PRACTICE*.”
Explore my teaching website here! An LTF collaboration of College Writing students and Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Ph.D., this teaching website offers resources that Cal students asked for, constantly add to, and learn from.
Karen Llagas, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies
“Social Justice & Social Media: Raising Critical Awareness & Community Engagement Among Language Learners”
My project aims to explore the use of social media and news media outlets as resources for authentic and current materials in the Filipino language classroom, and to increase student engagement with different intersections of their communities. The project aims to explore ways to raise critical thinking in language classrooms that go beyond communicative goals. By examining how certain Filipino words (like “freedom,” “women,” “power”) appear in different contexts (FB posts & Twitter, academic journals, newspaper articles, memes, for instance), interactive and dynamic opportunities can be created to learn relevant vocabulary that is contextualized in real-time use, and can empower students to examine their sources more critically.
Exploring my teaching website here! This LTF project website is developed in collaboration with Kenneth Wong.
Sarah Gold McBride, American Studies
“Making Senior Thesis Mentorship Meaningful During Remote Instruction”
This project will develop a framework for engaging undergraduate students in a robust, rigorous, and meaningful senior thesis seminar taught through remote instruction. For many students in humanities and social science disciplines, the process of writing a senior thesis can feel solitary, even during face-to-face instruction; the conditions of remote instruction can amplify students’ sense of disconnect from their work, their instructor, and their classmates. Moreover, students conducting thesis research without access to university services (such as the library or on-campus wifi) are, in my experience, more likely to struggle with their research, exacerbating equity of access for students who want to engage in the highest level of undergraduate research. This project will work to ameliorate these issues by developing a course framework and course materials—available for adoption by faculty across campus—that will provide remote students with the structure, resources, and sense of community they need to produce substantial and significant thesis projects.