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

Number four Privet Drive is neat, orderly and well-scrubbed on the outside, dark and malevolent on the inside. In contrast, the magical world seems to hold many places, people, and items that are the opposite—shabby in appearance, splendid in essence. In this chapter, we begin to see this contrast.

This is episode 6 of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, entitled Twenty-nine Questions, in which we think about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 5, Diagon Alley.

After 10 years of Don’t ask questions—the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys—Harry explodes with questions as Hagrid escorts him to Diagon Alley to get his magical school supplies.

This is episode 5 of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, brilliantly entitled Hagrid’s Lesson, in which we think about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 4, The Keeper of the Keys.

This is a big one. The key to the entire educational program of the entire Hogwarts saga is revealed in this chapter. Well, one of the keys—a big key. And it’s announced by high school dropout, Rubeus Hagrid.

This is episode 4 of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, extra-brilliantly entitled The Letter and the Knobbly Stick, in which we think about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 3, Letters from No One.

The wizarding world intrudes on the Dursley’s comfortable emptiness with nothing-more-dangerous-looking than a letter in an envelope. The power of the written word is enough to drive the Dursleys onto a stormy island shack and Vernon to madness. The study in contrast between the wizarding world (the good part of it) and the Muggle world (the bad part of it) is painted in this chapter as the power of the written word vs. the power of physical force.

This is episode 3 of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, tragically entitled At School, Harry Had No One, in which we think about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 2, The Vanishing Glass. It’s not a happy chapter, if you really think about it.

Number four, Privet Drive appears to be an orderly, healthy, stable place to grow up, with its tidy front garden and family photographs, but it holds a bad secret behind the front door. Vernon and Petunia think their worst secret is the existence of their magical relatives. This chapter tells a far worse secret that is all too real and all too frequent, even in the non-literary world.

This is episode 2 of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, brilliantly entitled A Tale of Three Families, in which we think about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone chapter 1, The Boy Who Lived.

It will be ten years until Harry’s first day of school at Hogwarts, but there is still plenty of education-relevant content in this first chapter. Educators know that a student’s family background has everything to do with what a student brings to school. Harry has three families.

This is the very first episode of Harry Potter Goes to School: Learning in and out of Hogwarts, brilliantly entitled, Introduction and Announcements. 

My name is Carrie Birmingham, and I am an educator working from home in spring 2020. I am hopeful for an eventual return to being together in person, a better vision of what education can be and a better version of ourselves.

I am passionate about improving what happens for muggle students in muggle schools. I am also a reader and re-reader of the Harry Potter series. I am combining these two passions into this one podcast—brilliantly entitled Harry Potter Goes to School, Learning In and Out of Hogwarts, coming to a device near you in early April.