How real-life teachers use Harry Potter in the classroom

The Crimes of Grindelwald, the latest official movie set in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, hasn’t been particularly well-received by the viewing public, but the power of original Harry Potter story is still very much alive. You can see it onstage, where Harry Potter and the Cursed Child recently set a record for weekly Broadway ticket sales. Less expectedly, you can see it in the classroom, where teachers have long used J.K. Rowling’s story to connect with their students.

This comes from NPR, which reached out to educators for stories about how they incorporate Harry Potter in their classrooms. Some of the responses are pretty delightful. Take Ben VanDonge, who teaches fifth grade in Walla Walla, Washington. “We have a sorting ceremony at the end of the year to let kids know which homeroom they’ll have, play our own version of quidditch about once a month,” he says. This year, VanDonge’s classroom is festooned with Ravenclaw blue and bronze, while colleague Kate Keyes has decorated her’s in Hufflepuff black and yellow. A third teacher has joined in with Gryffindor-themed classroom. (No volunteers for Slytherin, apparently.)

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VanDonge has his students read the books, too. “We burn through Sorcerer’s Stone in about three weeks as a read aloud using the Jim Kay illustrated edition so all our kids have access to the theme and don’t just think we’re crazy,” he said. “We refer back to the story frequently as we teach language arts concepts, too.”

"We knew that we were doing a good thing when at conferences…we had numerous parents tell us it was the first time that their kids had been excited to go to school since kindergarten. Or tell us that they’ve never been able to get their kids to read at all before and now they’re having to have lights out rules."

That’s a point that comes again and again in these stories: teachers incorporate Harry Potter into classrooms not for its own sake, but because it helps children learn. Take the case of Deborah Stack, who teaches English at a middle school in the Bronx, in a classroom where half the kids speak Spanish and the other half Arabic. In 2018, she found the digital editions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in her students’ native languages, and decided to give them a try. “They were so into it like I would end class and they would moan,” Stacks says. “They would be like, ‘Oh, it’s over. I want to read more,’ which never happens. It’s just like the perfect combination of accessible language.”

What’s even more amazing is that the kids continued to talk about the book outside of class, despite not speaking the same language. “When you start making sure the whole class is reading the same story and that story is really exciting, that story is really engaging, you start to see kids like really talking between language groups and debating and arguing,” Stack said.

"You’re seeing this amazing dialogue in English between a native Arabic speaker and a native Spanish speaker and they’re utilizing their English and are talking about the same story. They’re not doing it because I asked them to, they’re doing it because they’re really excited about the story and that’s where you get the authentic debate and discussion, which is what you want in an English classroom."

And the applications of Harry Potter aren’t limited to English. For example, Kelsey Hillenbrand teaches middle school math in Evansville, Indiana. “When we were studying fractions and decimals, I cover all of my desks with butcher paper to look like the wooden tables that you see in Snape’s classroom,” she explained, “and we had potions class.

"I think they ended up solving like 60 questions that were all fractions and decimals. But each page had its own little puzzle so that they knew how much of each ingredient to add to their cauldron."

In this case, Hillenbrand isn’t so much using Harry Potter to teach the kids something directly, but more as a way to get them interested in her subject. “They’re learning something and it’s just taking that fear and that edge out of it and to see them come back in and say ‘What are we going to do today, Mrs. Hillenbrand?'”

Not every teacher surveyed was able to incorporate Harry Potter into their classrooms smoothly. Cynthia Richardson, who teaches eighth grade English in Washington, “uses the wizarding world as a basis for her behavioral management system,” but doesn’t actually teach the books due to pushback from parents.

"I kind of started growing the classroom and making the classroom look like the world of Harry Potter…that’s when I started encountering some parents who were hesitant. So I actually put a disclaimer in my syllabus that this was not intended to teach witchcraft or that I was not going to teach the book because parents had been saying ‘we don’t agree with that book option.’"

Weird as it is to believe, there was actually a time when people were freaking out over the idea that the Harry Potter books were teaching children witchcraft…and apparently that never completely went away. “I understand wanting to protect children from things that we think they’re not ready for, especially some of the later books that are much darker, and I talk with them about what the power of literature can be,” Richardson said. “How maybe it’s an opportunity for them to read with their child in this case and talk about those themes and talk about the struggles that are in them and what a powerful learning opportunity that could be for the child.”

Happily, it sounds like most of the Harry Potter-loving teachers don’t have this problem. “In sixth grade, we read a set of novels and the essential understanding is how individuals can overcome adversity through the help of community,” said Shehtaz Huq, who teaches sixth-grade English — each of her students gets a Hogwarts letter at the start of term. “I wanted students to see how the students at Hogwarts and the adults in Hogwarts found their community whether it was their biological family or their chosen family.”

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