Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts

Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts

By Carrie BirminghamEducationFiction
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Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts episodes

  • Looking Back, Part 1
    I’ve looked back over all 28 episodes and found eight topics or themes that
    seemed important in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—things that the
    text has to say to the field of education, and things that education has to
    say back to Hogwarts. This episode takes a look at the first four topics.
    Here are all eight:
    1. Hogwarts is a parody of school
    2. All the people at Hogwarts are full humans
    3. Learning theory
    4. Joanne's literary tricks
    5. Moral concerns
    6. Things about teaching methods
    7. Hogwarts as a miniature society
    8. Themes I think Joanne intended
    28 min
  • Good, Evil, and Power
    For every time you use your power to bring joy, inspiration, humor,
    healing, and humanizing to your students, thank you. Thank you from me and
    from all the people who will be living in the world with the children your
    students are now and the grownups that your students will become.
    24 min
  • Paradigm Shift
    After at least six months of believing that Severus Snape is trying to
    steal the Sorcerer’s Stone for himself and then adjusting that to believe
    that he’s trying to steal it for the Dark Lord, the puzzle pieces of
    Harry’s belief system are dramatically rearranged. We are a lot like Harry.
    In real life, when we’re confronted by evidence that we have been really
    wrong about something, it’s really hard.
    21 min
  • Practical Exams
    It looks like the only school subject that is useful in the
    through-the-trap-door adventure is Herbology. If the purpose of the
    Hogwarts series was to promote the value of academics as taught in schools,
    we may expect to see a little more of what the kids learn in their classes
    coming into play in this adventure.
    23 min
  • Harry Didn’t Have a Clue
    Did you notice that for helping Hagrid in the middle of the night, Harry
    and Hermione’s punishment is helping Hagrid in the middle of the night? Did
    you notice that Hagrid didn’t even acknowledge that Harry and Hermione are
    there in detention for helping him when he got himself into a big mess? He
    just carries on, as if Harry and Hermione are just random students to him.
    What’s with that?
    28 min
  • 50 Points from Gryffindor!
    Why did Minerva deduct only 20 house points for Draco’s nighttime
    wanderings but 50 house points each for the three Gryffindors’ nighttime
    wanderings? Maybe because Gryffindor is her house, and she is the kind of
    person to be harder on students of her own house than students of another
    house. Maybe she took off so many points because Harry is extra-valuable?
    Of all the kids in the whole school, let’s not lose Harry Potter, so let’s
    punish him extra to keep him safe!
    27 min
  • Will There Be Dragons on the Exam?
    Harry, Ron, and Hermione face down two crises in this chapter: Hagrid’s
    illegal dragon and impending final exams. The chapter begins about ten
    weeks before the end of the school year, and Hermione begins a concentrated
    period of preparing for final exams. It’s good to remember that Hogwarts is
    a parody of school, and the British exam system is a hard-to-miss target
    for parody. Well, so is the American exam system.
    23 min
  • The AHA! Moment
    Teachers love it when students have an AHA! moment. There are plenty of
    AHAs in the Hogwarts series—for the characters and for the readers. The big
    AHAs come at the end of each book, and the biggest AHAs come at the end of
    the series. So far, our trio has AHAd that Fluffy is guarding something,
    probably the grubby little package from Gringotts. The name Nicolas Flamel
    is a loose end thrown out by Hagrid, and the kids have rightly figured from
    Hagrid’s nervous responses that Nicolas Flamel is an important clue to
    their current mystery: What is Fluffy guarding?
    24 min
  • I Don’t Need a Cloak to Become Invisible
    How routinely did Albus Dumbledore wander the halls, the classrooms, the
    common rooms of Hogwarts--invisibly? Could Mrs. Norris see him? How is that
    different from the way we supervise students in school with cameras,
    data-gathering instructional apps, even just watching them in the
    classroom? For better or for worse--students are watched and supervised and
    even surveilled all the time they're in school, maybe not by anyone
    invisible--but we all accept that as normal.
    25 min
  • Priorities Straightening Out
    Christmas dinner at Hogwarts is an abundance that draws a sharp contrast to
    the meagerness of Harry's life with the Dursleys. Glimpses of the
    professors in a relaxed, even tipsy state amuse and amaze. Hagrid and
    Professors Dumbledore, Flitwick, and McGonagall are all there, joking,
    laughing, drinking, and flirting. Snape, appropriately, seems to be absent.
    Harry's afternoon is filled with Christmas contentment: snowball fights,
    wizard chess, leftovers, and Weasley antics. So far, the best Christmas
    Harry can remember. And Christmas is about to get even better.
    24 min

About Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts

From the publisher's feed

Welcome to Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, a podcast for students, teachers, professors, parents, and anyone else interested in what a Hogwarts education has to offer. Please join us in the Great Hall for a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the Harry Potter series and all things education.