Gifted Muggles Dive into Hogwarts

by Lindsey Wallem It's not quite Hogwarts, but it'll do... I was impressed with this blog post by writer/teacher Claire Hennessy (www.clairehennessy.wordpress.com) about  teaching a gifted class called "The World of Harry Potter." The students were able to delve much deeper into the material having grown up with the novels. Hennessy's job then became not to teach the content of the books, but to help the students expand their interpretive and analytic skills. "Because as much fun as the classes are, they’re also doing something – ensuring high ability, exceptionally able, gifted, whatever-label-you-want-to-use kids learn how to learn ... and hopefully what the kids are leaving with isn’t just ‘what happens in the books?’ but ‘how and why do good stories work?’ or ‘how are magical worlds conveyed convincingly?’ or ‘is Slytherin really a good idea?’ or something – some way of thinking about these things that they hadn’t really experienced before," This type of learning is what we encourage at CTD. Being gifted should not mean the end of intellectual inquiry. Our variety of programs provide a setting in which the student can think about a topic in a way they haven't before, even if they are already "familiar" with the material. Any opportunity which fosters creative learning is important. As Hennessy says, "It’s not curing cancer or saving the rain forests, true. But it’s education. And it matters." Keeping a gifted learner challenged can be difficult. What kind of environment is your child most successful in? Do you know a student in grade 4, 5, or 6 who loves Harry Potter? The Summer Program Apogee course"The Story Behind the Story" investigates the ancient tales and folklore behind the modern fantasy novel.