Hello . Pull up a chair, pour a warm drink … here’s what’s on my desk this month.

☕️ Good day, Professor.

Whether you’re reading this with your first cup of coffee or between commitments, welcome. Here, you’ll find teaching tips, technology tools, connection builders, and joyful inspiration to help you design vibrant, memorable, and student-centered college classes.

THIS MONTH'S IDEA: REST & REDESIGN

🧠 INSIGHT: A rested professor sees their course more clearly.

We need recovery to allow for creativity. When we are running on fumes, it is easy to redesign from urgency, habit, or guilt. But when we step back and recharge, we can return to our courses with more creativity, clarity, and care.

Before adding more activities, tools, or content, June invites us to ask what our students actually need.

Remember:

• Rest creates the mental space to notice what felt rushed, confusing, or unnecessarily heavy.
• Renewal helps us separate meaningful improvements from things we keep doing out of habit.
• From that clearer place, we can redesign one part of the course to offer more clarity, more relevant choice, or deeper connection.

👉 TRY THIS: The Rested Redesign

Step 1: Rest first. Take a real pause before opening the syllabus, Canvas shell, or slide deck. Go outside. Take a walk. Sleep. Read something unrelated. Let your nervous system stop acting like it’s still Week 14.

Step 2: Return and notice. Look at one part of your course with fresh eyes. Ask: Where did students seem confused, disconnected, rushed, or overly dependent on me?

Step 3: Redesign one small thing. Add one clearer instruction, one better example, one meaningful choice, or one connection point.

Review one activity, assignment, class discussion, or module that did not land the way you hoped. After some distance, ask what would make it easier for students to enter, participate, and succeed.

💬 Ask Yourself

Where might students hesitate, click around unnecessarily, or feel unsure?

Then you can add one clearer path forward.

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FROM MY CLASSROOM & CAMERA

The last day of class was a success! I took them on a virtual field trip using the campfire space I created in GoBrunch following our usual Zoom room. Images and names covered for my students' privacy, but you can still get a glimpse of the spaces and my many faces. ◡̈ It was a fun reminder that the spaces we create, even virtual ones, can shape how students feel when they gather, reflect, and close out a course.

Our university's LMS, Canvas, went down just days before finals, and the breach was quite a wake-up call for us educators!

Click here to watch the short video for:

- what I already keep outside Canvas

- what I wish I had backed up

- and why LMS outages are not just IT problems… they are teaching continuity problems.

I spent 3 days at the Course Design Institute, hosted by the Rutgers Institute for Teaching, Innovation, and Inclusive Pedagogy. I kept thinking about student choice and how to design options that create ownership without creating chaos. I have a plan drafted that I will finalize this summer and make my course the best it's ever been!

At the Rutgers Active Learning Symposium, I presented on virtual camera tools and kept returning to a similar idea: thoughtful design helps students feel more present, connected, and engaged.

Our keynote speaker, Barbara Oakley, PhD, gave me a lot of neuroscience to think about when it comes to teaching and learning. She connected AI, neuroscience, and learning in ways that reinforced so many ideas I care about in my teaching: curiosity, practice, memory, focus, movement, breaks, and the balance between direct instruction and active learning.

She also reminded us that learning takes both focused attention and space for the mind to wander. That connects so well with this month’s theme: rest is not wasted time. Sometimes rest is what allows new ideas, deeper understanding, and better design choices to emerge.

💬 What idea might surface if you gave your mind a little more room to wander before redesigning your course?

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💛 PERSONAL MOMENTS

I’m allowing June to be a month of both rest and work.

Some days I'll be outside with my husband, letting ideas & good food simmer, sparking creativity, and recharging my batteries.

Other days, I’ll be planning ahead with my timer ready and my brain in focus mode. I’ll also be checking in with other educators and colleagues throughout the summer, which feels like the right balance of accountability, encouragement, and breathing room.

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RESOURCES

Free

If you’re revisiting assignments this summer, this 2-page TILT Higher Ed Checklist for Designing Transparent Assignments is a practical place to start.

TILT stands for Transparency in Learning and Teaching, and the checklist helps educators decide whether an assignment clearly explains its purpose, task, and criteria for success. It also encourages faculty to invite students to review assignment expectations before they begin, since students are often the best judges of whether directions feel clear.

What it helps with:

Designing assignments that give students more clarity about what they are doing, why it matters, and how success will be evaluated.

For more visit https://www.tilthighered.com/resources

Featured

If one of your fall goals is to help students feel more confident speaking early in the semester, this ready-to-use lesson can help.

My Public Speaking: Fear & Confidence lesson is a customizable 41-slide deck designed to help students understand speaking anxiety, reframe fear, and build practical confidence before major presentations begin.

It includes discussion prompts, activities, examples, and enough material for approximately three hours of class time.

Click Here to view the lesson

What’s Next:

Lots of rest ◡̈ June will hopefully be a quieter month.

I’ll be letting ideas simmer, checking in with a few accountability groups, and slowly applying what I learned from the Course Design Institute and Rutgers Active Learning Symposium - one purposeful course improvement at a time.

More teaching ideas, tools, and resources are coming in July and August, but this month I’m making space for renewal before the next round of creating begins.

Rest is not a reward for finishing the work - though it can be. It also helps us return to our work with clarity and creativity so I hope you get some rest too. Happy summer!

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Until next time... Keep learning, inspiring, and teaching beyond the bland. 💛

Warmly,

Tatiana Rodriguez ☀️ ☕️ 🧠

Creator & Educator, Tatiana Teaches

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