My approach toward classroom learning is heavily grounded in who I am as a researcher and individual. I understand our social and cultural performances in the physical world as developed by our readings of the structures, events, and others that compose it. As my own experiences have indicated, it is not our measurable physical reality that determines the shape and contours of social life. Rather, it is the way in which people produce, transform, and reproduce meanings within our physical realities.

The goal of a dialectical approach to learning, regardless of the course, is to develop a critical literacy amongst students. My understanding of critical literacy is that it enables students to question deterministic assumptions of history and inspect relations of power that work to shape the ways in which people produce, transform, and reproduce meaning. As an educator, I see my role as assisting in the creation of learning contexts where my student-colleagues construct meaning, produce knowledge, and view themselves as proactive subjects.

Through dialogical problem posing, knowledge is not approached as information to deposit into the students’ minds. A common myth surrounding this pedagogical approach is that it creates a chaotic educational environment lacking structure, authority, and substantive learning. On the contrary, I have come to know this teaching style to be an organized and powerfully creative method through which students hold themselves and each other accountable. Dialectical thought is foremost critical thought. It always takes its foundational premise to be subjectivity. It constantly seeks to expose the fallacy in the arrogance and taken-for-granted nature of common sense (and ultimately language). As such, a dialectical approach continuously undermines the self-assurance of norms, mores, and taboos. It deconstructs the student’s safe, uninterrogated political and ideological worldviews in order to reconstruct those frames of reference.

In the classroom, I utilize a variety of approaches such as small group exercises, multimedia presentations, in-class debates, and demonstrations, etc. I also try to keep pace with developments in classroom technology, such as course web pages. I firmly believe in challenging students in different methods and course materials. I do not shy away from teaching difficult material and assigning heavy reading as I have found that students consistently rise to the occasion.

I believe that there is a lot to learn from the students I engage. As we co-investigate objects of knowledge, students are able to learn not just from their interactions with me but also from each other. Every student contributes their story, thoughts, and perspective that they bring with them to the classroom and the learning process. I provide them with the space to develop their majors and interests in the class. It is not a situation where one knows, and the others do not; it is rather the search by all at the same time to discover something by the act of knowing, which cannot exhaust all the possibilities in the relation between object and subject.

With each successive class, the culture of the learners increasingly becomes the basis of the learning process. For instance, as a teaching assistant for several semesters of the Social Foundations of Education, each week I would have students play an active role in teaching each other. During every class, a group of students would present reflection papers on assigned readings. The students always seemed to enjoy debating one another on their interpretations of the texts and the substance of the theories we used. Also, individuals (or groups if they choose) lead discussions on an analysis of an educational topic using a foundational social theory. After the presentations, the rest of the class would have the opportunity to critique the application of the functional, conflict, or interpretive lens.

Whether a class focuses on social foundations of education, race and ethnicity, or the history of educational reform, the class itself is most often our most important resource. As an educator, I

feel it is my responsibility to go beyond the written words of the books, articles, and theory of the classroom materials to allow the class to read themselves as ‘text’. The values, belief systems, and cultural identities that each student brings to class and their social relationships revealed through dialogue are important sources of information that can be continually decoded, analyzed, and comprehended. This critical knowledge can bridge the gap between the student’s lived experiences and classroom content, while simultaneously exposing critical relationships of social reproduction.

So what does this mean for my teaching persona, as it were? As an educator, I have come to claim my identity through a process of negating styles and methods inadequate for a democratic and liberatory classroom. I have adopted a dialectical method as my approach to classroom interaction and learning. This process is contrary to any notion that the teacher occupies a position as the sole dispenser of knowledge. Rather, it is intended to empower students as active participants in the process of learning, to render them not as objects, but as active subjects in the construction of their own learning.

Each summer at Northwestern, I teach a seminar called Race and Technology through the Writing Program. The course is designed for first-year students, many of them student athletes, and for most it serves as their literal introduction to college life — their very first college class. Over six weeks, students learn the fundamentals of academic research and develop a ten-page research paper.

Given the rapid rise of generative AI on college campuses, and the fact that these students had graduated high school only a few months prior, I designed a library assignment in the summer of 2025 with a specific purpose in mind: to familiarize them with campus resources. The task was straightforward — visit the main library and retrieve materials to use in their research papers. What I expected to be a simple exercise, however, revealed a striking disconnect between the assumptions instructors carry into the classroom and the realities of what it means to be a student today.

When I dismissed class and stepped outside, I found my entire class standing in front of the building, bewildered. They did not know where the library was. Chalking this up to being new to campus, I walked them over myself. Once inside, I decided to stay in case questions came up. After more than thirty minutes, I noticed that no one had moved from the lobby. When I asked why, one student reluctantly spoke for the group: they didn't see any books. Another added that they had never been to a library before and didn't know how to find materials on their topic. Several others nodded in agreement. What followed was an impromptu lesson on library organization, catalog searches, and how to physically locate and retrieve a source — skills I had simply assumed they possessed. It became clear that in the digital age, knowing how to navigate a physical library was not a prerequisite for reaching this level of academic achievement.

These students were, in their own right, highly skilled researchers. A quick Google search surfaced whatever information they needed. For them, platforms like Google, Google Scholar, YouTube, TikTok, and ChatGPT function as libraries — expansive, intuitive, and always accessible. The physical library, by contrast, had become part of the hidden curriculum of higher education: assumed, unspoken, and unfamiliar. I was taken aback by the idea of teaching college students how to check out a book. They were equally puzzled by being asked to do so. We were, in that moment, each confronting the other's blind spot.

That experience crystallized a connection I had long sensed between my work as a teacher and my role as an academic adviser. This was not an entirely new insight — many of my colleagues who also serve as academic advisers had long considered advising itself a form of pedagogy. I had, in fact, written about this idea in my own application materials in 2020:

I often questioned how prestigious institutions of higher education were failing these student populations. How was it that students could pass their classes yet never feel equipped with the tools to become integrated members of the academic community? It became clear to me that the role of an adviser is intricately intertwined with the work of teaching and scholarship. My work as an adviser — these interactions with my students — is key to their academic success. I have found that advising is not about showing students the "right" path, but about illuminating the process so that they can make the most informed decisions about what best suits their needs and long-term goals.

A foundational truth about academic advising is that empirical research does not establish a direct correlation between any single advising approach and student outcomes. For this reason, we do not define student success by grade point averages alone or by what proportion of students pursue a particular career path. Research does, however, demonstrate a meaningful connection between advising and student retention, the development of campus culture, and students' sense of belonging.

Cultivating a sense of belonging supports essential dimensions of the college experience, including student engagement, increased use of campus resources, and meaningful support for students from underrepresented and marginalized communities. Here, "sense of belonging" refers to "students' perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the group or others on campus" (Strayhorn, 2012, p. 3). A sense of belonging has been shown to correlate with numerous indicators of success in higher education, including retention, academic and social integration, and psychological well-being (García & Garza, 2016; Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Museus et al., 2017; Sheldon et al., 2011).

In my role as a Weinberg Adviser, the department operates under an informal but meaningful philosophical premise: that academic advising constitutes a form of teaching and, as such, functions as a pedagogical practice. Pedagogy is commonly defined as the method, art, and science of teaching — encompassing the strategies and theories educators use to facilitate learning. Weinberg advisers hold faculty appointments across a wide range of arts and sciences disciplines, and interpreting advising as teaching raises important questions about standards, effectiveness, and scope of practice within the advising role (Rose, 2020). Advising limited exclusively to course selection would undercut the institution's broader educational mission by failing to promote sustained engagement with the goals of a liberal arts education or meaningful reflection on learning outcomes beyond immediate career preparation.

This approach formally positions academic advisers as educators responsible for supporting students' understanding of their academic programs as well as the broader purpose and value of the undergraduate experience. Advisers frequently serve as students' primary point of contact for navigating WCAS institutional policies, academic expectations, and university culture. In this capacity, advisers are responsible for interpreting institutional structures and requirements and conveying them in ways that are clear, consistent, and accessible.

Defining advising as a pedagogical practice supports a deliberate shift away from a predominantly transactional or administrative model toward one centered on student development. Within this framework, advising extends beyond articulating requirements and procedures to include guided discussion, reflective engagement, and informed decision-making. This approach reinforces institutional goals related to student learning, persistence, and academic success by helping students clarify their goals, build confidence, and make informed choices throughout their academic careers.

So how do we enact a model of advising pedagogy that draws on research, lived experience, and reflective practice? The answer does not lie in increased event programming. Rather, it is found in the ongoing professional development of those most directly engaged with students — the Weinberg advisers themselves. The goal is for advisers to participate in sustained professional development that strengthens their ability to communicate in inclusive and culturally responsive ways with students from diverse backgrounds, and to ensure that the knowledge informing those interactions reflects current research and best practices. In this way, professional development supports advisers in building an advising pedagogy capable of creatively addressing the challenges their students face, fostering a sense of belonging, and building a meaningful campus culture. It also supports adviser retention and provides a substantive new data point in the promotion and reappointment process.

For my Searle Fellows project, I set out with a focused goal: to restructure the advising office's DEI committee I was leading in order to make it more efficient and effective for Weinberg's student body. What I discovered, however, was that organizational restructuring also required philosophical reevaluation. This surfaces a deeper question: what might an agreed-upon advising approach look like for Weinberg Advising? If no single best approach exists that is simultaneously attentive to regional, social, and cultural differences and capable of bridging racial, gender, and sexuality divides, how do advisers account for that complexity in practice? Do we continue searching for a framework to recommend to Weinberg Advising, or is this an opportunity to develop our own — one built from our specific context, commitments, and student population?