Frankel, Valerie Estelle, Ed.: Teaching with Harry Potter
2014; Volume: 25; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0897-0521
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoFrankel, Valerie Estelle, ed. Teaching with Potter. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. 288 pp. Softcover. ISBN 978-0-7864-7201-7. $35.00. Teaching with Potter is another volume in the recent spate of anthologies on Teaching (name of popular culture phenomenon), with the important difference that this book presents strategies for addressing a variety of age groups ranging from the primary school to college. volume is structured in three parts: Reaching Kids--A New Wave of Young Readers, Innovative Approaches for the Internet Generation, and Meaning in Children's Books Within the University. Reading all three sections is fascinating as a reflection on the particular qualities of the Potter phenomenon in recent popular culture; readers with more narrowly focused needs or interests will want to read more selectively, as the authors range from a Sunday School teacher to an SAT instructor to college professors, with the essays correspondingly varied in focus. Most of the essays have a practical focus, and the book includes a 3 5-page appendix with class exercises, assignments, lists, and worksheets pertaining to specific essays in the collection. Despite the three-part organization, some of the individual essays address more than one age group, such as Lana Whited's Hogwarts Academy to the Hero's Journey, in which Whited first describes her Potter option within a summer day-camp sponsored by her college, and then, in a separate section of her essay, describes her inclusion of Potter in a college-level course on the Journey of the Hero. From this one can see that Rowling's work can be approached in different ways--fannish and scholarly--and can be profitably studied by different age groups. Tenille Nowak's The Nuances of Rule-Breaking seems to be directed at the parents of young children and adolescents; Nowak acknowledges that the character Potter is not always a perfect role model, and suggests that parents discuss the various incidents in the novels with their children in a Socratic way--not saying which choices are right and wrong, but drawing the awareness out of them by asking about motivations and outcomes--and arriving at a Situation Ethics-type of perspective based upon which children can become more thoughtful moral agents. It is of course possible that this may be overly sophisticated for some readers, but Nowak is not aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator here (Muggles?), but at Ideal Readers. Another essay directed at parents is Denise Dwyer D'Errico's Harry Potter and the Child with Autism, a personal essay documenting the response of D'Errico's son to the Potter series. D'Errico illustrates how her son's Autism Spectrum Disorder was susceptible to the magic that the Potter books could bring to bear, given the mother's attentive participation in the process. J. Malcolm Stewart's Strange Apostle: Assessing the Conflict Between Today's Christianity and Modern Culture, and Kristine Larsen's Boy Wizards and Girl Scientists: Rowling's Contributions to Science Outreach exemplify this collection's wide range of approaches to adapting the Potter series for teaching. Stewart reflects on students reading Potter books during his Sunday School classes, borrowing a book from one of the offenders, and realizing that what the students hunger for is not black magical spells and incantations but a compelling story; he integrates that awareness--that his students read Potter books because they are engaged in the character's moral development through a gripping plot--into his Sunday School by having the students create plays based on the Parables and act them out. Stewart has recognized that adolescents learn lessons about moral development through stories which engage them, and he has transferred this principle from reading the novels to having the kids act out various roles in the Parables. Larsen, in a very different educational context, directs a university-based planetarium and observatory, and has found that Potter-themed Sky Talks have drawn in many younger attendees to her planetarium and have given them touchstones to help them remember the astronomical data, particularly memorization of stars and other celestial phenomena after whom Potter characters have been named--Luna Lovegood, Aurora Sinistra, Bellatrix Lestrange (named after a bright star in Orion), Merope Gaunt (one of the Pleiades), Draco Malfoy (whose first name is a constellation), Sirius Black, Arcturus Black, Pollux Black and Regulus Black (all of whose first names they share with stars), to mention a few. …
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