Reflections on Inaugural Thriving in Teaching Program
In my application for UC Berkeley’s inaugural “Thriving in Teaching” program, I wrote about my hope “to contribute to a Community of Practice by sharing Indigenous womanist ways of knowing and being.” I came to this program confident in my capacity to design an inclusive and accessible classroom environment because of my K–12 teaching and undergraduate academic coaching experiences, but by the end of the first semester, I felt hollow and haunted by the extractive nature of undergraduate teaching at this university and my inability to be my full Indigenous womanist self in front of students. While I introduced myself to my Fall 2025 students as a first-year faculty and a critical race theorist, I never expanded on these identities or what they mean in the context of UC Berkeley. Consequently, during the last weekly session, a male student, who, to be fair, excessively missed classes, asked if I was finishing my dissertation because he thought I was a graduate student instructor. In that moment, I blamed myself for not incorporating more of who I am into the course, and I realized that I didn’t bring my full self to the Thriving in Teaching program either.
The activity that contributed significantly to a pivot in my teaching and instructional design was the excerpts from Stories from the Front of the Room (2017) and the “Letter to Students” assignment, which asked us to express our thoughts and feelings to our previous, current, or future students. In particular, the “Open Letter to the Black Woman in the Front Row” and the letter to “Black and Racialized Students” expanded my thinking about pedagogical possibilities and presenting my full self to students. I decided to assign these two letters in my Spring 2026 undergraduate class to talk about racial justice and solidarity. There were two immediate outcomes that stuck with me and encouraged me to be more open about my Indigenous womanist identity with students. First, in reading students’ responses to the required readings, multiple students reflected on the interactions described in the letters and expressed a lack of awareness about the interpersonal challenges that Women of Color faculty experience in predominantly white classroom settings. Some expressed remorse for witnessing racist or sexist comments directed at Women of Color educators at UC Berkeley and remaining silent. One student drafted their own letter to “Women of Color in the academy,” writing “I am here because you are there. Someone like me is never supposed to arrive in places like this, and yet here I am — standing on the architecture of your persistence, your exhaustion, your refusal to disappear.” This gave me hope that my students might have my back if we “transgress” against the university together by collectively refusing to accept its exploitation of Women of Color (hooks, 1994).
The second outcome occurred during that same week at the onset of a virtual joint session with a UCLA undergraduate class on Asian American and Pacific Islanders in higher education led by my co-advisor Dr. Robert Teranishi. At the beginning of this session, Dr. Teranishi asked both his and my class if anyone had any relevant current events or news they wanted to amplify in the space. After a couple students posted upcoming events in the chat, Dr. Teranishi shared news that a story had been published about a historic hiring of faculty through an Asian American Pacific Islander cluster initiative. I was shocked and a little embarrassed as Dr. Teranishi shared the article that publicly named me as “one of Berkeley’s first Pacific Islander faculty members.” As students started reacting on Zoom, expressing their shock and congratulations, it hit me that up until that moment, I had kept that reality from students. I wasn’t open about the promise and weight of being one of the first and one-of-one at this large university. When paired with the faculty letters from Stories from the Front of the Room (2017), Dr. Teranishi’s sponsorship resulted in a deeper sense of reciprocal care and respect by students, which I deeply appreciated as a new faculty.
In my own letter from November 2025, which I addressed to “students, present and future,” I wrote about my commitment to enhancing student well-being rather than contributing to its deterioration. At the time, this commitment emerged in response to the state of the sociopolitical world and my own grief after losing a former student to mental/emotional unwellness and believing they left the physical realm without knowing they are deeply loved. Now, I believe that all students who enroll in a class with me should feel and know they are cared for, valued, and loved. In rereading my letter before the end of the Spring 2026 semester, I realized that I knew my students felt comfortable interacting with one another, but I didn’t know if they actually felt valued or well in the space. This led me to add questions to the end-of-semester evaluation about how the learning environment and the instructor helped students “feel welcome, included, supported, or loved.” Today, I know that most students in my Educ 155AC class felt “seen” and “welcomed,” with a handful of students reporting that by the “end of the course [they] knew the names of all my classmates and made a good number of friends in the class.” This, to me, is student success and an effective learning environment that holds students accountable for their relationships and reciprocity to one another.
I don’t think I would have added questions about love and support had I not reflected on my core teaching values through the letter writing activity and opened myself to the pedagogical possibility of being cared for by students who recognize and respect our full selves. The letter writing activity reminded me that it’s valid to lead with love and to trust students will have your back when presented with the realities of Women of Color faculty. I am grateful to have ended this school year feeling more joyful and more loved because of the pedagogical decisions I made as a result of my participation in this program.
