Harry Potter decided he wanted to teach his fellow students at Holinarts School of Engineering and Wizardry. He was planning on majoring in defense against the dark sciences, but found that Holinarts did not have a course in dark science spells and their counterspells, a course he would desperately need to perform well in interviews. To fulfill this need, Harry turned to his school's policies on student led courses, a unique and special opportunity offered to Holinarts students as a way for them to engage more fully with the experimental education Holinarts was offering. As someone who had always been excited by education and teaching, Harry was looking forward to exploring this opportunity.
​
The first thing Harry learned upon looking at some information on running student-led courses (or SLCs as the documentation seemed to call them) is that they usually are not run by one student alone. He reached out to his friends Hermione and Ron to see if they would be interested in teaching the SLC with him and was delighted by their enthusiastic responses. That said, in usual Hermione fashion, Hermione quickly read up on SLCs and soon knew much more about them than Harry.
​
"You know, Harry," said Hermione, "we are terribly underprepared to run this SLC next semester. For one thing, we are hopelessly behind schedule. It is already late April and most people, including me, already have their schedules planned out for next semester. Laurelius Linda said that if we wanted to do an SLC in the fall, we would have needed to submit a proposal by February, and given as it is now late April and we don't even know the material for this class we are going to teach yet that cat is clearly out of the bag."
​
"Gosh, Hermione, stop being so negative," chimed in Ron.
​
"She makes a good point," replied Harry, trying to calm everyone down, "But I was thinking we could self study the material for the course in the fall and then be prepared to teach it in the spring. Teaching it will not only be doing a service for the rest of the community, but it will help to cement our knowledge in the topic, and learn a bit more about teaching and pedagogy techniques."
​
"But will it count for anything? I have had my whole four year plan laid out since first year and I will need to substitute some things to make this work," Hermione countered.
​
"Next semester, if we self study the material that will count for wizardry credit and the following semester teaching the course will count for humanities, or more specifically, education, credit," Harry explained.
​
"Humanities credit?? I'm so in," said Ron enthusiastically.
​
"Ok, ok, I think I can make this work," said Hermione. "I will just need to move around a few things, maybe get my hands on a time turner and.."
​
"Hold up, didn't we decide the time turner thing was a bad idea?" remarked Harry. "Besides, we don't want you on this teaching team if you aren't fully committed. There is going to be a lot of work involved and you are going to have to face that to be a part of this, you might have to drop some other things. Like, we don't want this to take over our lives, but at the same time, you probably should not be 24 crediting or whatever it is you usually do if you are teaching this course. It would not be fair to us and it would definitely not be fair to our students."
​
After a bit of debate, Hermione agreed that to be a part of the teaching team for the SLC, she would limit the number of other courses, extracurricular clubs, activist activities, and on campus jobs she took on for the semester they were teaching. Ron and Harry were especially thankful for this when they began to realize just how many teaching team meetings they would need to schedule for each week.
​
The last thing they had to do in preparation for the semester ahead was find a content advisor. They knew that their professor named Copernius Casey had a lot of experience in the field of dark science spells and counterspells. They asked her if she would be willing to help them self study the material in preparation to teach a course in the following semester. They were excited and delighted when she agreed to help them on this endeavor.
​
Next, they needed to find a professor who would be willing to advise them on pedagogy and the day to day running of the course. They felt that another one of their favorite professors, Provilius Parker, would be a perfect fit for the job. Parker was a humanities professor, which gave him the ability to grant them AHS credit (in education) for their teaching efforts.
​
The next semester the team got off to a slow start as they began to get acclimated to the other classes they were taking and felt fairly busy with their fall semester classes. They were finding it hard to get motivated to work on their independent study, but the promise of the class of students they would need to teach that spring got them going.
​
The first task that Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to tackle in their fall planning semester was to create a plan and structure for the following semester. Hermione smartly suggested that she, Ron, and Harry should probably get together before each class to plan out the lesson for the following day. Ron agreed to work out the scheduling for their teaching team meetings while Hermione worked on the scheduling of their advisor meetings. Even Harry was horrified when he saw that Ron had scheduled their team meetings to last for 15 minutes starting directly before the class period. Hermione, on the other hand, scheduled four 1 hour weekly recurring advisor meetings, two with Parker and two with Casey.
​
"Don't you think that's a bit excessive?" questioned Harry. "Parker and Casey are volunteering their time to help us run this student led course. We should show that we value their time by doing as much as we can without them and then planning out what things we want to talk to them about in those meetings. Not to mention that is a lot of time for us to be in meetings each week. Let's see if we can just have 1 meeting with each of them a week. We can even probably get away with just meeting them once every other week. We will want to keep them updated and, of course, we can reach out if we run into any questions or concerns. I honestly think we need more than 15 minutes before class for our meetings with just us though. Those probably need to be longer and scheduled farther ahead so we have time to make changes to the lesson plan if we need to before class starts."
​
"Yeah, Ron," said Hermione, "that plan is frankly ridiculous. If we are planning for a 100 minute class period, we will need at least that much time in our pre class meetings."
​
The three ended up agreeing on a fairly reasonable meeting schedule for a student led course teaching team. In the end, Hermione proposed the following for their weekly calendar:
"Dang, Hermione!" exclaimed Ron, "that's already like 9 hours a week not including time spent doing lesson preparation, grading, or helping students outside of hours. Do we really all need to hold 2 office hours a week?"
​
"Well," said Hermione, "I actually thought that number was a little low. Then again, if we are able to recruit a good team of course assistants we might be able to lower that number a little. In that case, we could just be on call during course assistant hours or hold our hours by appointment."
​
"Isn't a 4 credit class only supposed to take 12 hours a week? asked Harry. "Sounds like this could easily exceed that for us."
​
"For sure," said Hermione, "It's definitely a good thing that you all convinced me to limit my other courses and activities for next semester. We may only be getting 4 credits for it, but teaching is a big commitment and some weeks we definitely might run over. Of course, I'm sure we will have quiet weeks as well. Getting this experience of teaching a class will be worth it though."
​
"How do you figure?" asked Ron. "I'm starting to wonder if I should bail."
​
"Don't bail Ron!" said Harry, who did not want to be left alone on the teaching team with Hermione. He also figured having a variety of personalities and learning styles on the teaching team would help to make it a better experience for their students. "In some ways, teaching this course will be saving you time. You will learn the material so much better when you try to teach it that studying for your job interviews will be a breeze. But most importantly, it is going to be a ton of fun! This is our chance to incorporate all the fun activities and lessons that we have always wanted to see in our own classroom experiences and make them a reality."
​
"Not to mention the professional experience you will gain from teaching the course," commented Hermione. "It's a good resume builder and it will help improve your disastrous presentation skills. It will also be a great chance for you to build strong relationships with Parker and Casey, not to mention the chance to spend time with Harry and I. Honestly, Ron, if you are ever going to get a job, I think you need this."
​
"Hey!" Ron snapped. "Don't make this personal. It just sounded like a lot. But you make some good points. And on top of all that, I will get AHS credit, which I definitely need. I'm all in."
​
Once they felt like they had a solid plan for a typical week for the following semester Harry and Hermione decided they better get moving on the tasks at hand. They knew one of the first things they would need was a syllabus for their course. In fact, a syllabus is an important component of the student led course proposal that they needed to submit by October. While the rest of the school community was distracted by a group of runaway dementors attacking Harry during his quidditch game, Hermione dragged a begrudging Ron down to the restricted section of the library, where they could find books about dark magic and teaching practices. Luckily, she had taken a course in "Teaching and Learning" the prior semester and was able to pull out some of the readings from that course for guidance on writing a syllabus. She read about "Composing a Learning-Centered Syllabus" in O'Brien's book, Focus on Learning. She told an apathetic Ron that in addition to all the logistical things they would need to include on their syllabus they should also include a list of topics, assignments, and an assessment plan. Ron took Hermione's first draft and cut down the length while also adding some entertaining bits "so that people would actually read it." They also consulted the archive in the SLC Guide to see templates and example syllabi from past student-led courses.
​
"So no tests in our course, right?" said Ron as they were drafting their preliminary course materials.
"Hmm, well before we make those kinds of decisions, we should all really have a conversation about our teaching philosophies," Hermione replied.
​
"Uhh, what the heck is a teaching philosophy Hermione?" asked Harry.
​
"Formally, a teaching philosophy is a statement of your values and beliefs as they relate to teaching," said Hermione.
​
"You don't actually just expect us to have those lying around, Hermione," said Ron, incredulous. "We are just students after all."
​
"Well, no. But you clearly do have certain things you value in teaching Ron! You yourself started this by saying you don't want to give our students tests. I think it is important to talk about what we all value in teaching so we can properly frame the assignments and day to day life in the course."
​
"I think it is important we give them some credit just for showing up," said Harry. "In my opinion showing up is the first barrier to success and anyone who makes it happen should be rewarded for that."
​
"See, Ron, this is why this conversation is so important!" exclaimed Hermione.
​
"Ok, so attendance grade and no tests," sounds great to me, replied Ron. "Let's move on, we got lots of stuff to do."
​
"Hang on Ron, I haven't even had a chance to say what I value yet," said Hermione, hurt.
​
"We all know what you value. We just need to make our students read three books a day and we know you'll be good," snuffed Ron.
​
"Hmm, not a bad idea.."
​
"It was a joke, Hermione! No way are we going to make them do that much reading!" Ron retorted, frustrated.
​
"Ok, fine. But I do really value textbooks, both as a teacher and as a learner, and I think it is important that we have one, even if we don't follow it directly," said Hermione. "And I also value team based learning because I think people learn better together, so let's make sure we have some team based assignments."
​
"Sounds good to me," said Harry, clearly trying to move on from the tense situation.
​
"What about our assessment plan?" asked Hermione, oblivious.
​
"Can't we just give everyone we like A's?" Ron asked.
​
"That seems a little unfair.." commented Harry.
​
"Agreed, according to the SLC guide the best way to handle assessment for an SLC is to make it as objective as possible," said Hermione.
​
"Ok," said Harry, "so let's try to make our questions as objective as possible while also giving everyone the chance to do well and succeed."
​
"Sounds like a difficult balance to strike," remarked Hermione, "but I'm down to try."
​
One thing that occured to them as they were thinking about assessment was the issue of accommodations. "Hold up," remarked Harry as they were working on finalizing their syllabus. "How will we handle students who need accommodations? As students, we should not have access to information on what students need accommodations, so how would we be able to support those students?"
"Well if you had read the guide you'd know that our content advisor will handle it," replied Hermione, exasperated by Harry's cluelessness. "Casey should have access to our gradebook and the ability to change grades as needed. She should also be the one that our students should go to if they need an extension on an assignment for any reason at all."
​
After many iterations, the three came up with a syllabus that they were all happy with (or at least happy enough with - Ron still found it "boring" and Hermione insisted it was missing some things).
​
After submitting their SLC proposal, the three continued chugging away at their independent study. Finally, about 3 days before the course fair Harry came running into the common room holding a letter in his hand. "Guys! They approved our SLC! They are inviting us to hold a table at the course fair."
​
"Well that's just awful, isn't that in like 3 days?" said Hermione, sounding nervous. "They've given us no time to prepare."
​
"Don't be ridiculous," said Ron. "Three days is more than enough time for us to prepare. We literally need to do nothing. We just show up. And this is exciting! We got approved!"
​
"Yes! I mean we could make a little flyer about our course. But even still, we can definitely make that happen in 3 days," said Harry.
​
The three made up a little flyer and took it to the course fair where they got more attention than they were expecting. Even Draco Malfoy stopped by and expressed interest in the course to Ron's utter dismay. "We do have the ability to veto students from taking our course, right?" Ron asked.
​
"Uhh, no. If we want to do this properly, we have to be willing to teach anyone who signs up. There is no silver bulleting when you are teaching a class, Ron," said Harry.
​
And in fact, when they got the sign up list from Linda after registration, they did find that they had an interesting cast of characters signed up to take their course.
​
Despite their plan and schedule to do things far ahead of time, the team still found that it was a scramble to get their first few lessons and homework ready at the beginning of the spring semester. Finding a way to both learn new material and structure it in a digestible way for their students was an exciting challenge. Harry did feel that he was learning the material far better than he would have if he did not have to explain it to other people. Their first few lessons ran smoothly, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione alternating who was preparing the lesson for the day so they each only had to run a lesson once every 3 class periods.
​
Unfortunately, Ron soon found that his own school work was slipping as his sister, Ginny (who was taking the course) and all her friends seemed to think he was always available after dinner and on weekends to answer their questions. Hermione was growing concerned about the amount of time Ron was spending helping people for the class and decided to consult the good ole' trusty SLC Guide for advice.
​
"Guys, I think we need to have a class discussion around our boundaries and when students can ask us for help. This is getting ridiculous. Ron cannot always be on call to help people with our course," brought up Hermione at the next teaching team meeting.
​
"Huh?" Ron sat up confused, "I don't mind at all. I don't really want to do my other work anyway."
​
Harry had noticed that Ron had in fact seemed quite delighted by the gaggle of younger girls that was now always following him around. But he too, was worried about Ron's suffering grades. "We can't have you flunking out of school because of our class Ron. It is not worth it."
​
The next class, to Ron's dismay, Harry and Hermione reminded the class that they were students too. They asked students to hold questions until office hours if they could or send them a letter by owl if they needed a quicker response. The class was receptive to the boundaries discussion and much more respectful of saving their questions for hours when they could after that discussion. Ron may have been sad to lose his fangirls, but Hemione and Harry were happy that he was no longer in danger of failing his other classes.
​
A few classes later, Harry became distressed when Draco Malfoy began loudly complaining that their grading and assessment plan was unfair and biased in favor of their friends and other students who lived with them in Gryffindor house. He felt that he and his peers in Slytherin house were being treated unfairly, despite the close to objective grading scheme. Harry asked Casey to look at Draco's submission for the problem set he was complaining about. Casey double checked that the grading was fair and accurate and even cross checked it with a few of the other submissions Harry, Ron, and Hermione had graded. Once she confirmed this, she ensured Draco that the system was fair and that if he ever had any complaints or concerns about the teaching team he should feel free to direct those to her. After this conversation with Casey, Draco stopped complaining about the team's assessment plan and later even admitted that he felt the system was more fair than in a lot of his other courses.
​
Right before Holinarts' mid semester break, the evil wizard Corona began picking up steam. Everywhere Corona went she cast a spell that was able to torture everyone in the surrounding neighborhood and any people they lived with. Most people survived Corona's torture spell, but they all suffered greatly. Afraid of what would happen if Corona came to Holinarts and got all the students in the dorms in one go, Holinarts made the decision to send all students home for their mid semester break and instructed them to not plan on coming back. Harry was incredulous. Holinarts was home. He certainly did not want to go "home" to the Dursleys. His original plan was to go home with Ron, but even Ron knew it was too dangerous. Ron already had so many siblings and having more people in close quarters meant more of a chance or Corona striking. In the end, Harry, Ron, and Hermione all had to go off their separate ways and faced a new and exciting challenge, teaching remotely.
​
They were surprised to find that despite Hermione's many books that told her that they would be better off keeping the class as asynchronous as possible in this new remote format, all their students still seemed to want to be present with them through remote fire chats during their class time.
​
They were thankful that as the end of the semester neared, several younger students expressed interest in carrying on the course the next year. Originally, the team had been thinking they would send a note to the class and get a gauge on who might be interested in teaching it the following year. When they were chatting through their fires to prepare to write out this note, Ginny walked over to Ron's fireplace.
​
"Could you all not send this note out?" Ginny asked.
​
"Uhh, why not? You just want this course to die out or something?" Ron countered.
​
"No, no, not at all. It's just.." Ginny started. "It's just we already have a good group of people planning on taking it on for next year. We have already been doing some planning. We don't want it to get to a point where we have too many people."
​
And that is when it hit them. Harry, Ron, and Hermione realized they were not needed anymore. The class would continue on and the younger students didn't even need or want them to be involved. They were pleased, but also felt a bit sad. They didn't realize until now just how much they had come to love SLCs and their involvement with them.
​
"I guess I was kinda expecting we would be involved in the planning for SLCs for next year," said Hermione, "But it also feels good to know we have created something bigger than ourselves. Seems like other people must have liked our course if they are planning to carry it on."
​
"Circle of SLCs man, kinda like the circle of life," said Ron, throwing down his parchment.
​
Before completely dropping the subject, Harry made Ginny promise that the new team would do everything in their power to make sure any student who was interested in teaching it, at least got to be a part of the conversation. They all agreed that it wouldn't be fair otherwise, especially if there were others in Slytherin house who wanted to help teach it.
​
The team realized that they trusted Ginny and her friends to do a good job, which was important because they knew that they now had to go out and use their newly acquired skills in dark science counterspells to go defeat the evil wizard Corona.
​
Luckily, by Hermione's insistence and guidance from the wonderful SLC Guide, the team had been archiving the course materials all year. Therefore, when they had a meeting with the new teaching team, they were able to hand over all the archived materials to them. Hopefully this would help the teaching experience to go even more smoothly in the next year!
​
Harry, Ron, and Hermione set off on their mission to defeat Corona, proud and happy to know that within a year they would have another great group of Dumbledore's Army wizards graduated from the SLC and prepared to join them and back them up in their noble and worthy mission!