From Potter to Pedagogy:Harry Potter as an At-Risk Student

Teaching Stories

“What follows can… be described as the efforts of storytellers… to render school life in all its complexity and variety-- to render, as well, the ironies and paradoxes, the surprises, the baffling moments, or the revelatory ones, that visit teachers and those being taught as they collectively go through a day’s school routine” (Coles xi).

At-Risk

National Center for Education Statistics Ethnic minorities Low socioeconomic status Single parent home Below average grades Negative peer pressure

These factors do not make these kinds of students less smart or less capable or able to achieve, but the statistics are against them

Cultural Capital

Harry considered at-risk because of his life at

home

Deprivation of: Physical resources

Emotional support

Cultural capital

The Dursley Family

“… all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley’s,, and

Dudley was about four times bigger than he was.”

“He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him in the nose.”

“The cat-flap rattled and Aunt Petunia’s hand appeared, pushing a bowl of canned soup into the room… He put the empty bowl back… somehow even hungrier than he had been before the soup.”

“I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!”

Physical Resources

The

McGonagall Question

What is appropriate?

Physical Resources

Stephanie Jones

“… I wanted them to understand their experiences as central to their developing identities, and learn how their diversity could help them to be sensitive to other local and global injustices.”

Empathy

Physical Resources

Harry’s association with working-class individuals

Parental Involvement

“…had never been able to confide in them or tell

them anything about his life in the wizarding world...”

“Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles.

What he really wanted (and it felt almost shameful to admit it to himself) was someone like- someone like a parent: an adult wizard whose advice he could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared about him, who had had experience with Dark Magic…”

Parental Involvement

McGonagall

Yes to Quidditch No to Hogsmeade

Lupin Yes to extra lessons No to Marauder's

Map and nighttime escapades

Parental Involvement

Dumbledore

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”

Parental Involvement

Stephanie Jones case study about working-poor

mothers and the threat middle-class women teachers pose to their families, especially their daughters

Search for ways to bridge the gap between family and school Open-door policy Home-school weekly journals Offer choices with PTC Community meetings Home visits, etc.

Parental Involvement

Harry’s struggle to read the

dominant culture at Hogwarts, or the Wizarding World

Paulo Freire “Reading is not exhausted

merely by decoding the written word or written language, but rather anticipated by and extending into knowledge of the world. Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world. Language and reality are dynamically intertwined.”

Cultural Capital

In Muggle classrooms, how do teachers deal

with these situations?

Implications

Funds of Knowledge

Encourage opportunities for students to bring their culture into the classroom and have it be valued (Moll, 2000)

Avoid the Deficit Model of thinking “We can make powerful changes when we break through the pervasive

influence of the deficit paradigm and recognize the untapped strengths of students and teachers.”

Encourage opportunities for students to bring their culture into the classroom and have it be valued

Develop their individual talents

Implications

“He’s a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he

sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….”

Implications