““You have substitute teacher vibes””
A student recently told me after a tutorial. “Like, not in a bad way,” she added quickly, “but you don’t take things too seriously and it’s nice.”
A few months prior to this particular conversation, I was asked to teach a course on Ethnography. To be perfectly honest, I had to Google what ethnography even was. [According to Wikipedia, ethnography is a subset of anthropology that “involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.”]
There was a shortage of staff in one of our programs, and they needed someone to jump in (so in some sense, I was indeed a substitute teacher, but I digress). Thanks to the guidance – and patience – of the course coordinators and my fellow tutors (who were actual social scientist versed on the subject),* I got a crash course on ethnography and I was thrown into a classroom full of unsuspecting students (except for the one student who knew that I usually taught International Business Law, who asked out loud “what the fuck are you doing here!?” with a concerned laughter).
In short, the last few months of “teaching” ethnography has been an incredibly enlightening and rewarding experience. Not only did I learn from the prescribed course materials, but because I did not feel entirely confident in my understanding of the subject matter, I was able to make our tutorial meetings a truly collaborative learning experience. I was also a student in this group, trying to learn about – and better understand – this unique research methodology. I listened with curious intention to what the students had to say, without feeling the need to assert my “expertise” on the subject matter (because I didn’t have any to speak of).
Not only was this a refreshing pedagogical exercise, but substantively, I learned about how we can give voice – and thus recognition and validation – to a group of (often marginalized or otherwise “unseen”) people. How we can listen better and be more aware of our own positionality and biases. How we (ought to) balance writing practically to make an impact while also painting a vivid picture (aesthetically and poetically) to put the reader in the scenes that we observed.
At a very meta-level, I learned how to think about reflexivity. I was able to explore all these topics with the students and trule relate to how they experienced learning about these themes. Sometimes, the content was confusing and frustrating. Sometimes, it was profound and provocative. And through it all, we learned – as a group – how to listen to one another better. For this experience, I am so very grateful for the students in my ethnography groups, my fellow teachers for allowing this substitute teacher into their midst and to allow me into their learning process.
Scene from the Sustainable Global Economic Law Summer School at the University of Amsterdam
As an epilogue (or something along those lines), I have been teaching at the Sustainable Global Economic Law Summer School at the University of Amsterdam this week, where one of the workshops was on “Reading with Ethnographic Sensibilities” (taught by the wonderful Laura Mai and Simone van de Wetering). Thanks to my experience with teaching ethnography, I was able to understand and speak (semi-)intelligibly about the topic during the workshop. It felt as if I had been learning a new language and for the first time, I was able to speak with others in that foreign language. I was able to see the world through an entirely new lens and it was exhilarating! So in sum, I recommend to everyone and anyone, regardless of their discipline, to become substitute teachers in ethnography!
*Shout out to my fellow Ethno-Gs: Lauren Wagner, Dhika Sjamsoeoed Sadjad, Tara Rogers, Obaa Akua Konadu, Masha Denisova, Yiming Wang and most importantly, the students in Tutorial Groups 8 and 9!!