Through this blog, I will be exploring using fandom as a motivator for literacy, specifically focusing on the Harry Potter fandom, as it is one I am intimately familiar with. Before we begin, I thought it would be beneficial to give you some background information on myself and show you what fandom did for me:
I
grew up in the Harry Potter generation. I was a Harry Potter Nerd. I have a
detailed memory of purchasing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone while I
was on a vacation with my friend in Kitchener Waterloo. The book was a
recommendation from her mom. I remember reading the first chapter about the
Dursley’s later that night in the hotel room. Though it was a little advanced
for me, my mom read the rest of the book to me before bed each night. One
night, after my mom finished reading me Chapter 16: “Through the Trapdoor”
where Harry has to go on alone to face Snape, (or so he believed) after leaving
his friend Ron behind on the gigantic chess board and giving Hermione the only
potion that would allow her to travel back safely through the enchanted purple
fire, I found myself making up a song from Hermione’s perspective, singing to
Harry, telling him to be brave, and that she loved him, all while brushing my
teeth. Little did I know that what I was doing would later become a defining
movement: Wizard Rock, music inspired by Harry Potter.
Wizard
Rock motivated me to take on a position of leadership. It was my love of the
movement that motivated me to suggest holding a concert at my local library. I
got to email the wrockers I loved, and put on a pretty awesome show! It also
motivated my friend and I to pick up a guitar and try to make music ourselves.
We created a band (Gred and Forge) complete with a personalized Myspace page,
and was ready to join in the community. Although we only recorded a few songs
on our computer, our poor quality songs were received with support by the few
people who heard them. Due to a lack of musical ability “Gred and Forge” (our
band name) never made it out of my mom’s garage. I was more skilled in visual
arts and drama, so my fandom contributions consisted of stiff fan art and a
cringe worthy, canonically incorrect talent show performance in grade five.
Harry
Potter is how I met the best friend I had grade seven to grade twelve. Over the
course of those five years, her and I wrote “The Ramblings” a role-play script
where we inserted ourselves into the Wizarding World and divided up playing the
characters between the two of us. We created subplots and romances and
tensions; we explored not only what we thought would happen as the books went
on, waiting for the next instalment from J.K., but also roll played what we
thought happened in the past, before Harry was born. The Ramblings spread over
notebooks passed back and forth in class, to MSN messenger conversations and
then into T9 text messages. Through this shared fanfiction, I learned how to
type and text! We explored what we thought love meant, and what we wanted out
of future relationships. I still have these ramblings saved in multiple forms
and on multiple devices – they are so precious to me, I do not want to lose
them, though I’d probably cringe to re-read them. Though I often say it
jokingly, fanfiction taught me everything I know about sex. As a teenager,
fanfiction and fan art was a safe way to explore my sexuality without fearing
your parents would walk in and discover you on a porn website.
While
I was a reader before I found Harry Potter, I know many people who say that
Harry Potter was what got them into reading. It was a truly unique series that
had an enormous widespread, cross-generational impact on the whole world.
My
lengthy memoir aside, the point I’m trying to make is that children naturally
respond to the stories they love in creative ways, whether it’s writing music,
creating quizzes (as I did after reading each of the Series of Unfortunate
Events books, and created a binder full of quizzes, recreations of the
illustrations, and other trivia), writing fan fiction, making art, etc. So as a
teacher, why not embrace it?
 |
| A Ravenclaw dancing in some Hufflepuff robes. |
No comments:
Post a Comment