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"What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Congratulations on the end of the Fall term. Make sure to celebrate this milestone with your learners. Make time this winter break to celebrate and take care of yourself to refresh, rejuvenate, and reignite your passion for teaching and learning.

The CTL/ASSETT staff are here to support all campus educators through free consultations, online teaching resources, workshops, and other programs! We invite you to email our team with any questions related to teaching or to learn more at CTL@colorado.edu. 

Celebrations

Celebrate Your Learners and Yourself

The final weeks of the semester often bring fatigue but also excitement about the upcoming break. Amidst all of this, it is easy to forget to take time to celebrate meaningful moments from the semester. Have you considered how you might celebrate your learners before the semester ends? What things will you do over the break to celebrate yourself and refresh, renew, and reignite before the Spring semester begins? 

at the end of the semester helps build self-esteem, acknowledges their hard work, and shows you care about them as people, leaving your learners with a positive attitude about the semester. 

Here are some ideas for celebrating with learners:

• Provide food at the last class and allow for learners to socialize with one another and you.
• Create a collage or a timeline highlighting the important destination points during the semester and have learners engage with the collage to add the important points during their journey. (This can be done virtually with concept mapping tools or in-person.)
• Provide short letters of appreciation for each learner or share an email or announcement to express your gratitude for all of the learners.
• Allow learners to release the stress of the semester by having karaoke, trivia games, or an improv session during the last class.
• Use contemplative practices such as a brief or to let learners unwind.
• Use the last session to do a reflection activity such as . This activity offers learners time to think about what they will use or find most helpful from the learning as they move forward.

Now that you’ve celebrated with learners, and the semester has ended, what’s next? Before you begin to think about preparing for the upcoming semester, take time to find the things that bring you joy each day so that you can relax and rejuvenate yourself before the spring semester begins. Taking time for and celebrating your hard work helps foster self-compassion and resiliency and prevent burnout.

• , such as exercising, getting a good night’s sleep and practicing mindfulness.
• Use contemplative practices such as a brief or to let yourself unwind.
• Allow yourself to take screen-free days and unplug for a bit.
• Take time to be with family and friends over the break.
• Build in time every day to get outside and breathe in fresh air.
• Work on your creative projects or hobbies, or perhaps take an art or cooking class.
• Read a book, just for fun! Or write, just for fun!
• Go explore or take a mini-getaway.

Taking this opportunity to celebrate the hard work and achievements of your learners with your learners is the perfect way to wrap up the semester on a positive note and model the joy of learning. And lastly, please remember to celebrate your own hard work and achievements!

Further Reading & Resources

• Compassion and Self-Compassion
• Nurturing Employee Well-Being and Job Satisfaction
• WorkWell at CUBoulder (Mindfulness workshop and free yoga)

Buff Spotlight

Transform your Teaching Through the Student as Partners Initiative

The Students as Partners program started as a pilot program in fall 2024. Three students worked with ASSETT’s Student Services Manager to design a program that partnered an equity-minded undergraduate student with a faculty member who sought to improve their teaching and their student’s learning. In spring 2024, ASSETT offered a soft-launch of this initiative with four student and faculty pairs. In fall 2024, this program paired seven undergraduates with six faculty partners.

Through this one-semester partnership, pairs worked together to incorporate the student perspective into a course, assignment, or project design. Partners meet as a large cohort throughout the semester to engage in pedagogical discussions and community building. A participant from a past cohort describes the partnership with her partner: 
 

‘We are collaborating to hold the big picture questions and questioning the assumptions upon which all other student outcomes are being made. We partake in reflection and conversation by gathering together after class in the messiness and the emerging beauty of what was just implemented. This allows us to continually assess how things landed and the unexpected experiences and opportunities.’ 

If you’d like to be a part of this community, see the spring ‘25 call for Students as Partners cohort below.

New & Upcoming

Please look for our January Edition of the CTL/ASSETT Newsletter for upcoming events during the Spring semester. Review the information below about participating in our upcoming signature programs.

Please share this opportunity with your students to enter for a chance to win $50, $100, and other prizes in the 2025 Competition! Display your work on our free web hosting service so you can share your expertise with employers, enter for a chance to win and have your site featured on the page. Click to learn more and submit your work by January 20, 2025. 


Engage with a community of faculty and students who seek to improve teaching and learning through a student and faculty partnership. Bovill, Cook-Sather and Felten define student-faculty partnership as a “reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualization, decision-making, implementation, investigation, or analysis” (2014, p. 6-7). The Students as Partners program partners an equity-minded undergraduate student with a faculty member who seeks to improve their teaching and their student’s learning. Through this one-semester partnership, pairs worked together to incorporate the student perspective into a course, assignment, or project design. Partners also meet as a large cohort throughout the semester to engage in pedagogical discussions and community building. This opportunity is open to partners campus wide. Student partners are compensated as an hourly employee and faculty partners receive a $500 professional development award. If you’re interested in this opportunity,


Do you want to learn about instructional methods and reflect on your teaching practices while building community? The Teaching Triads program provides a structure and framework for small groups of faculty from different departments to observe each other’s teaching, learn instructional methods from one another, build community, and optionally write peer observation letters for one another. The time commitment is anticipated to be 7-9 hours over ~10 weeks of the semester (the equivalent of less than 1 hour per week). Participants who complete the program will receive a $250 Professional Development Award. If you teach in-person courses and are interested in peer observations of teaching at CU Boulder in Spring 2025, please apply for the Spring 2025 Teaching Triads cohort.

Join us for other upcoming events!

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