Oliver Arnold
English,
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
A.B., University of California, Berkeley
I love teaching medieval and early modern literature, early modern and contemporary political philosophy, and tragedy from Aeschylus to Suzan-Lori Parks, but my purpose as a teacher is, above all, to challenge and encourage students to confront—fearlessly, rigorously, joyfully, and with growing confidence—the extraordinary demands that Shakespeare’s plays make on our cognitive faculties and their baffling and enduring power to move readers and audiences.
To accomplish these aims, I must help students, in large lecture courses––my four most recent offerings of English 117S and English 117B enrolled 630 students––and in seminars, recognize that Shakespeare is for them, that the plays invite their intelligence, their experience, and their curiosity; that he is theirs rather than the property of an exclusive, rarified club. My central pedagogical challenge is to dismantle the sense of exclusion that often accompanies canonical literature and replace it with a sense of intellectual ownership.
I often begin my courses by telling students that, for more than four centuries, thousands of philosophers, poets, playwrights, novelists, filmmakers, composers, and theorists have written about, wrestled with, and reimagined Shakespeare. This may seem like an odd gambit: if figures such as Hegel, Stendhal, Freud, C. L. R. James, and Toni Morrison have already grappled with these plays, what room could possibly remain? But that is precisely the point. I am inviting students to join an ongoing conversation: the fact that Shakespeare continues to generate thought—after Marx, after Arendt have had their say—is evidence not of closure, but of inexhaustibility. The door remains open, and students bring to these plays new forms of attention and historical situatedness.
In office hours, Q&A sessions, written comments on papers, and visits to discussion sections, I can often say—honestly— “That’s new. I’ve read this play fifty times, and what you are saying is new.” Watching students register that moment—that their insight is not derivative but genuinely contributory—produces visible excitement and intellectual confidence. In course evaluations, many students note that they enrolled to satisfy a requirement, often with reluctance, but left with a sense of having been invited into serious thinking they did not expect to be accessible or interesting to them.
I want students to grasp the magnitude of what is at stake when they read Shakespeare and other complex, influential writers. I ask them to think with Shakespeare as he thinks about monarchy and republicanism, friendship, agency, faith, freedom and unfreedom, love, beauty, justice, racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Doing so requires historical and philosophical scaffolding: I introduce students—in part, through dozens of weighty handouts—to early modern political thought, theology, and social theory, not as background ornament, but as tools for thinking. Great literature always seeks to induce thinking and feeling: from Aristotle on, philosophers have turned to fictions, especially epic poems and tragedies, to think about agency, ethics, consciousness, and what is peculiar to human beings, but as I encourage students to philosophize about and with Shakespeare, I also want them to recognize that plays and poems make meaning in distinctive ways, that there are things poems and plays can do that sermons, political tracts, or philosophical texts cannot do.
I want students to grasp the magnitude of what is at stake when they read Shakespeare and other complex, influential writers.
-Oliver Arnold
Over the last decade or so, I think that I have more effectively helped students recognize the beauty and emotional power of literary works by becoming a more open teacher. I know from evaluations that students have, from my earliest classes, recognized my passion for complex literary texts and for attending to them rigorously, and it always gives me joy when they say that the passion is catching. But I used to avoid reading aloud, in lecture or seminar, passages in Paradise Lost or The Tempest that I knew would make me choke up or even cry. I am not sure what exactly I feared, but I do know why I began to let go of my fear. In 2016, the English Department Citation Winner included the following recollection in her Commencement speech: “The other day, I saw one of my friends sitting out on Sproul. She looked like she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said: ‘I just came out of Professor Arnold’s lecture about Cleopatra in Shakespeare and you know, it was so beautiful. I think the GSIs were crying too.’ I did know. I immediately remembered what lecture she was talking about.” I am shamelessly celebrating myself, but that meant so much to me, in part, because I had been trying not to cry in front of the students and I realized that I had become part of a community of feeling as well as of thinking.
An entirely different circumstance also helped me become a more open and accessible teacher. In 2019, a few months before covid struck, I broke my back and neck in an accident. I have been a Type-1 diabetic since I was ten years old, but I always took care to hide my insulin pump from my students, to silence the many alarms that I wear. Once I was back on my feet, I hobbled around campus for a year in a neck brace and walking sticks: I couldn’t hide that. Somehow, this physical vulnerability contributed to my teaching: students with disabilities felt more comfortable and confident talking with me. I became more conscious of the ways in which students may feel challenged and even vulnerable when confronting a Renaissance text. I sense now that I am bringing my full self into the classroom and that many students respond in kind.
I want students to discover that Shakespeare is not only of his time but also a resource for thinking about ours. Philosophers and theorists continue to return to Shakespeare to reflect on consciousness and the unconscious, the meaning of history, the uses of compassion, and the conditions of political life. When students see that they, too, can keep thinking with Shakespeare about their own world, the plays cease to be monuments and become transformative.
Jhonni Carr
Spanish & Portuguese,
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., California State University
I teach linguistics as a set of tools for seeing what is usually taken for granted: how language works, how it circulates in public, and how it shapes access to information and belonging. In my courses, students don’t just learn terminology and theory; they collect evidence, test claims, and explain patterns in language they encounter every day—on city streets, online, and across the communities they move through. To support this work, I design courses around experiential and research-based learning, so that students engage in academic inquiry while developing a deeper understanding of their own language practices and cultural contexts, seeing their communities not only as objects of study but as sources of knowledge, and analysis grows out of practice rather than abstraction.
A core component of this approach appears in courses that engage students in community embedded linguistic analysis. For example, in Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape: Implications for Linguistic and Sociocultural Study, a course I developed as a Berkeley Language Center fellow, students document the displayed language present in Bay Area neighborhoods— storefronts, street signs, flyers, graffiti, and other everyday texts. Through this work, they build shared corpora that become the basis for systematic analysis. They use that data to examine community patterns of language use and access in their own communities. Coursework is structured to guide students from observation to interpretation: they learn how to document data systematically, identify recurring patterns, and support claims using evidence they have collected themselves. As final projects, students present their analyses in public-facing formats such as maps and websites, which encourages them to explain patterns clearly and responsibly rather than writing only for an instructor.
I use a similar approach in courses that focus on spoken language and variation. In Spanish Dialectology and Sociolinguistic Variation and Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, students analyze recorded speech and media examples to examine how accents and dialect features pattern across regions and social contexts. Students work with real speech data and are asked to justify what they hear and observe. Music, social media clips, and popular television provide shared points of reference, but the analytical work remains central: students learn to describe linguistic features precisely, maintaining analytic rigor while also reflecting critically on how accents, dialects, and language choices are represented and evaluated, as well as how language, identity, and power circulate in everyday contexts.
Mentorship often begins in course-work and continues through independent study, allowing students to deepen their engagement over time and take increasing ownership of their work.
-Jhonni Carr
One course that shaped my teaching in lasting ways was Spanish Morphology and Syntax, which I redesigned when instruction moved online in the middle of the semester during the pandemic. I adapted the final project so that students could apply course concepts while responding to immediate language needs in their communities. As a class, we partnered with local nonprofit organizations such as Clinic by the Bay, Somos Familia, and the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, and students worked in small groups to translate public-facing materials related to COVID safety guidelines, food security, and social services, including flyers addressing topics such as COVID-19 prevention and support resources for individuals experiencing domestic abuse. I paired each group with Spanish-speaking contacts who reviewed drafts and discussed wording choices to improve clarity and accuracy. In one case, a student who speaks Mixtec, an Indigenous language of Mexico, created a translation for migrant communities on California’s Central Coast, where information about health guidelines, financial assistance, and workers’ rights had been limited. The student produced an audio version of the translation, which was shared on social media and later broadcast on Radio Indígena 94.1, a station serving Indigenous and immigrant audiences. Across projects, students documented their translation choices in short analytic reflections, linking them to morphosyntactic patterns we had studied in the course. This redesign preserved the analytical focus of the class while asking students to think carefully about audience, register, and precision.
For some students, this kind of sustained analytic work does not end with a single course. My mentoring grows directly out of these teaching practices. Through independent study and longer term projects, students move beyond course-based analysis to learn how linguistic questions are developed, how evidence is selected and organized, and how observations become defensible claims. I work closely with students as they refine research questions, collect and analyze data, and articulate findings. Mentorship often begins in coursework and continues through independent study, allowing students to deepen their engagement over time and take increasing ownership of their work. Several students later used final research papers from these courses as writing samples in successful graduate school applications, carrying this preparation forward into graduate study and other professional paths, including after they graduate.
Across my teaching, I return to the same set of practices: asking students to work with real language, to justify what they claim with evidence, and to reflect on how linguistic choices matter in concrete settings. I view teaching as an ongoing practice of reflection and adaptation— one that connects linguistic analysis to the environments students inhabit. I design classes where students learn linguistics by doing it—collecting data, testing ideas, and explaining patterns they observe. These commitments shape how I design courses, revise assignments, and mentor students, and they continue to guide how I approach new teaching contexts. My goal is not to arrive at a finished model of teaching, but to remain attentive to how students learn best when analysis is rooted in experience and when linguistic inquiry feels both applicable and accessible.
Desmond Jagmohan
Political Science,
Ph.D., Cornell University
M.A., Cornell University
B.A., Northeastern Illinois University
I have four broad goals when I teach. First, I try to impart certain intellectual habits or virtues. Rather than urging students to chase grades, I encourage them to cultivate habits of mind
such as reading vigilantly, writing conscientiously, and engaging ideas with one another with seriousness and respect, and trusting that positive academic and professional outcomes will follow. Second, instead of instructing students what to think, I model how to think. When done well, this practice allows students to encounter the wonder of thinking itself, sharpening their own judgment, vision, and voice. Third, I encourage the pursuit of truth without the dismissal of those who hold mistaken views. I encourage them to resist dismantling others’ beliefs in the name of “enlightenment.” This posture by a professor casts students into darkness and elevates oneself as a savior. Students are a source of illumination and not mere clay to be molded. Fourth, I strive to help students discover—or rediscover—the importance and sheer joy of thinking deeply, reading carefully, and writing well.
These goals cannot be advanced propositionally; they must be enacted through conduct. Each time I enter the classroom, meet with students in office hours, or respond to their work, I aim to model these and other reflective dispositions. Teaching requires a careful balance between authority and freedom, instruction and improvisation, if it is to avoid both paternalism and the vanity of cultivating disciples. At a university where many students are first-generation, working class, and members of historically marginalized groups, paternalism reenacts a regrettable past, while discipleship undermines the value of autonomy and equal regard. The challenge, then, is to impart intellectual and civic habits in a manner consistent with respect for the student’s freedom and the principle of liberal neutrality. Teaching is, in this sense, an initiation into concentrated scrutiny: training students to interrogate what others pass over, while recognizing that the most enduring lesson lies not in assigned readings or delivered lectures, but in the intellectual and civic qualities one silently imparts through example. Your conduct should convey impartiality, thoughtfulness, and respect, even when engaging beliefs and arguments from which one might instinctively recoil.
Too often professors mistake doctrinal blindness for principled commitment, thereby undercutting their standing with students and the public alike. I am mindful of when I am speaking as a professor and when I am expressing my private views as a citizen, knowing that our stances carry normative weight that often escapes our own notice.
I structure course objectives to reinforce what I consider important academic skills and civic habits. In large courses, I write two lectures each week on the assigned text. Each lecture models close reading, textual analysis, and interpretation. Because many of the works are not conventionally philosophical, the lectures show students how to excavate implicit arguments embedded in metaphor, narrative, and imagery. Over the semester, students become adept at identifying the arguments that animate stories, polemics, and lives. The course also foregrounds the internal diversity of African American political thought. Students encounter thinkers grappling with the same conditions yet diverging sharply in how they diagnose injustice, envision resistance, and conceive justice. Seminar courses rely on sustained discussion grounded in specific passages from the readings, sharpening interpretive judgment and deliberative skill while reinforcing the link between close reading and strong writing. To develop these capacities, students complete weekly memos that require them to advance an interpretive claim within a tightly constrained form: a single analytical paragraph. Mastering the paragraph constitutes the first stage of a three-part writing process, followed by a midterm paper and a final essay that substantively revises and extends the earlier work. I provide extensive feedback on the midterm and meet with students repeatedly to underscore a simple lesson: serious ideas emerge through revision, refinement, and sustained attention. In seminars, I respond in writing to every memo and paper; in lectures, I read and comment on one paper per student. In Fall 2024, my feedback for roughly 120 students enrolled in PS 116J exceeded 54,000 words, each response tailored to the student’s particular interpretive, analytical, or writing needs.
I provide extensive feedback on the midterm and meet with students repeatedly to underscore a simple lesson: serious ideas emerge through revision, refinement, and sustained attention.
-Desmond Jagmohan
I supplement my teaching with sustained mentoring. I hold at least four hours of office hours each week and have built an alumni network of former students who return for one or two panels each time I teach PS 116J to advise current students considering legal careers. I also devote substantial time to helping students pursue summer and post-graduate fellowships, developing longer papers, meeting regularly, and providing consistent guidance. As a first-generation student who grew up in poverty, I did not know what opportunities existed. I assume many of my students share this blindness. So I do not wait for the confident student to seek help; instead, I make the hidden curriculum visible. To widen the academic pipeline, we have to begin with undergraduates. Finally, I direct research funds toward hiring undergraduate assistants, many of whom face food or housing insecurity. These positions offer both material
support and sustained mentorship. I have been in their place. It is difficult to think clearly when one is hungry, precarious, and unseen—and some of my students are all three.
While many of my students would describe me as a mentor, I avoid the language of mentorship because the term too often carries the connotations of guardianship, which threaten freedom and equal regard. I try to avoid paternalistic relationships. I didn’t always think about teaching in these ways. At first, I understood my goals and objectives simply as those of the courses. Over time, though, I began to ask why these skills mattered, whether they helped students penetrate life to its marrow, to see not merely that ideas matter but that ideas govern our lives in ways both terrible and wonderful. More importantly, I began to ask why even pursue this work if it failed to make a difference where it matters most: in the lives of our students.
Oliver John
Psychology,
Ph.D., University of Oregon
M.A., University of Bielefeld, Germany
B.A., University of Bielefeld, Germany
Getting a start through tutoring
Teaching found me early. I am from a large family that had constant financial problems, so I needed to work if I wanted anything that cost money. School was an escape from the chaos at home. Several amazing teachers inspired and challenged me. One of them hired me, at age 13, for the after-school tutoring program (which paid much better than delivering newspapers before school). I learned teaching is not just about effectively transmitting knowledge; fundamentally, it’s about connection, both with understanding (aka cognition) and with others (aka socio-emotional interactions), which can last for a lecture, a semester, a year, even a lifetime. I still visit that teacher in my hometown to connect with the person that introduced me to the thing that has given me purpose and meaning ever since.
Be genuine, empathic, and nonjudgmental
As an undergraduate, I discovered Carl Rogers’ humanistic psychology and three principles that make connections deeper:
- Be genuine: authentic, real, curious, open, and ready to explore
- Be empathic: kind, loving, and try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective;
- Be nonjudgmental (accepting)—create a safe space for exploration, trial and error, and encourage “progress not perfection” (aka growth mindset).
This humanistic approach shifts the goal from transmitting information to fostering the students’ potential and growth, and had a huge impact on the way I connect with others, whether talking to a stranger, teaching my undergraduates, or discussing teaching with my GSIs.
Starting at Berkeley in the mid-1980s, I thought my job was to teach the standard curriculum of my field and implement the three humanistic principles. In lecture courses, I experimented with ways to get the students more connected with the material, but wasn’t sure my teaching was effective. At a party, I got a disturbing glimpse into how time spent in class can impact students’ adult lives.
What do students remember 10 years later?
I talked to somebody who had taken a single psychology class in college. When I asked, “what do you remember from that semester of psychology?”, they could remember only a single finding—that people’s pupils dilate when they are attracted to someone. I was shocked. I did some research and found that humans learn more deeply (a) when they learn from vivid stories and (b) when they do things themselves. We humans, are a social species that learns from stories being handed down over generations and from doing things ourselves, with our hands and minds. So, I began to develop a new format where students learn through stories and by doing.
Teaching through personal stories
Over time, I have refined vivid stories to introduce each major idea in my class. I pick topics from the curriculum more selectively and use the extra time to go deeper, so students connect with the material and can apply it in their own lives. I no longer lecture about Pavlov’s tired dogs; instead, I introduce my cat Chloe, who became conditioned to my grinding my coffee beans loudly in the morning before giving her breakfast. I then derive all the major principles of conditioning through that example. Students learn how they can “see” these basic principles in their world around them. And the stories have that all-important stickiness. When I meet former students years later, they ask me “how is Chloe?”
Teaching that failure is normal and part of learning
I also include stories of how I have failed, like how my hypotheses about genetic effects were all wrong (as my own research then showed) and how I was a rather imperfect older brother (setting up my lecture on birth-order effects). Students “see” that making mistakes is human, normal, and part of learning, and that they, too, can follow the maxim “progress, not perfection.” Research shows that students learn better when they feel safe, welcome, and belong. I work on communicating and practicing those values (aka nonjudgment—acceptance).
I learned teaching is not just about effectively transmitting knowledge; fundamentally, it’s about connection, both with understanding and with others, which can last for a lecture, a semester, a year, even a lifetime.
-Oliver John
Learning by doing: Introducing diverse learning experiences and contract grading
In a lecture class with 300+ students, it’s difficult to provide time for hands-on learning. I have worked with my GSI teams and developed 14 web exercises: students complete measures used in the research they learn about each week (see the Overview document in Teaching Materials) and earn 1% class credit for each. A teacher workshop at Berkeley inspired me to use contract grading instead of grading on a curve. Students get 50% of their grade for assignments, including a final project (see Teaching Materials). The majority are so motivated that they complete 90+% of the work (i.e., A-level work). This grade distribution is consistent with high-GPA and course prerequisites that Berkeley students must meet before getting admitted to the Psychology major.
Need for structure and organization, shift to formative assessments
During the pandemic, I realized Rogers’ principles missed one critical element: the need for structure. I added a new hands-on assignment, Check Your Progress (see Teaching Materials). I wrote 7-10 core questions to direct students’ studying, breaking this giant task into weekly, smaller, more manageable bits.
Most recently, my amazing GSIs birthed another innovation to increase formative assessment (over summative, high-stakes testing): we converted our 4 quizzes to a low-stakes format, facilitating learning and enabling students to monitor their progress (see Teaching Materials). Students may take each quiz multiple times but receive credit only once they answer all questions correctly. I am excited by the results.
Advising and mentoring is also about connections
The idea that making connections is important also inspires my mentoring. I treat all my students with respect and curiosity, and I enjoy spending time with them. I offer an open office hour for my undergraduates, where 20-30 students gather around a giant table and discuss ideas and experiences. I meet weekly with my GSIs and my graduate-student advisees. What makes me happy? Seeing my students and former students thrive. Many are staying in touch. I am fortunate and grateful for being a teacher at Berkeley and getting to know so many amazing students here.
Alexis Shusterman
Chemistry,
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
A.B., Chemistry, Brown University
I have enjoyed all of my teaching assignments at Cal, but none so much as the unique challenge and responsibility of teaching Chem 1A, with its unfortunate reputation as a “weeder” course for pre-meds. Forced into a 500-seat lecture hall to puzzle over a complicated subject they do not necessarily find intrinsically interesting, I understand why many of my students feel overwhelmed before we have even begun, and I relish the opportunity to flip that script!
I had the immense privilege of growing up as the daughter of two chemistry professors, both dedicated and gifted educators. For me, chemistry was not some lofty, convoluted obstacle standing between me and my dreams. It was an everyday vernacular, accessible to perfectly normal people (because who could be more normal than your mom and dad?). This was an incredible gift.
Now, my goal is to pass this gift along to my students. Few have the privilege of learning chemistry from their parents, but I believe that all of my students deserve to be taught the subject by a real, accessible person who cares just as much about their success as a parent would. To achieve this, I design my classes to:
- Prioritize Fun
Fun can spark engagement in contexts with structural barriers to entry, and in the AI era, classtime MUST surprise and delight for attending in person to seem truly worthwhile. So I don’t take chemistry (or myself) too seriously. I wear goofy costumes. I lead chemistry sing-a-longs. I favor metaphor, dance moves, and onomatopoeia over technical jargon. I am supported by our amazing demonstration coordinator Karen Chan, who orchestrates real-time tests of our chemical predictions. The students and I cheer together when our hypotheses are correct and groan when they aren’t, knowing we’ll need to update our predictive model in light of this new data. - Facilitate Social Connection
The COVID-19 pandemic solidified my conviction that the best learning takes place in conversation with other students. To that end, I provide numerous “think-pair-share” opportunities for students to practice problem solving and looking for patterns together during lecture. I also coach GSIs to hang back during their weekly discussion sections to encourage as much peer-to-peer teaching as possible. Finally, after teaching a version of Chem 1A in Fall 2023 in which one third of students had to watch lectures remotely, Eric Neuscamman and I successfully lobbied to reinstate a third lecture section in Pimentel Hall in Fall 2024, such that 100% of students could once again attend in-person. - Encourage a Growth Mindset
I structure my courses to reward consistent effort and improvement, rather than perfection, with numerous “dropped” points in each assignment category. Chem 1A also has a cumulative final exam that can “clobber” a lower midterm score. I provide multiple practice exams and explicitly bill the weekly low-stakes assignments and quizzes as additional opportunities to practice; in class, I call them chemistry “push-ups” and remind the students that it’s important to do a few every day to build their “muscles” gradually.
I understand why many of my students feel overwhelmed before we have even begun, and I relish the opportunity to flip that script!
-Alexis Shusterman
- Center Real-World Applications
To students, fast-paced technical courses can feel like a grab-bag of esoteric facts, making already challenging material that much more difficult to internalize. Inspired by the principles of “backwards design,” I build my lectures and assignments around a handful of “big questions” from the real world (e.g., “what is the most efficient way to power a car?”) that I expect students to be able to address by the end of the semester. Focusing on these central learning objectives allows me to streamline an otherwise crowded curriculum, and students appreciate the transparency around what they are expected to understand. We refer back to the “big questions” throughout the semester to check our progress, making the connections between concepts explicit and relevant to the students. - Highlight Diverse Scientists
Every lecture, I profile a scientist whose research is relevant to the lesson. These scientists reflect the variety of backgrounds and identities present in my classroom, and many also have a UC Berkeley connection, which sparks interest in the original research happening on campus. I use this as an opportunity to coach students on how to get involved in research, hopefully demystifying this particular piece of the “hidden curriculum.” - Offer Help Proactively
I have always announced office hours, on-campus tutoring, and other academic services during my lectures, but I have noticed that general announcements are not always enough to reach the students that need help the most. Borrowing from the philosophy of “intrusive” teaching, I now proactively reach out to students who are repeating the course and/or whose exam scores indicate a non-passing trajectory and invite them to meet one-on-one. I schedule about three dozen such meetings per semester, during which I learn more about each individual and we come up with a plan together. Many of these students follow up in later semesters to share their progress or ask for more advice, and it means a lot to know that they continue to view me as a safe, supportive resource.
I couldn’t accomplish any of this without the help of GSIs. Like the students they serve, some GSIs are not intrinsically interested in their teaching assignment, and all are balancing various competing obligations. So I mentor GSIs according to the same principles, empowering them to lead discussion during staff meetings, pairing them up to observe and provide feedback on one another’s teaching, and revising their job responsibilities to decrease grading burden and increase student-instructor interaction. In addition to detailed lesson plans and grading rubrics, I provide GSIs with time sheets organized by task, to make expectations explicit while also preventing overwork. I have been lucky enough to have several GSIs return to my staff again and again, sometimes as “head” GSIs. In addition to the thousands of bright and motivated undergraduates I have encountered, it is truly humbling to rub elbows with these brilliant graduate students, the next generation of chemical educators!