new Professor/Neville's confidence in himself

[Suzanne Burns]

No: HPFGUIDX 5740

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Sam  Brown" <find_sam at h...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Heidi Henshaw"
> <hermione_heidi at h...> wrote:
> > Hi I'm  Heidi and I have heard that the new professor at Hogwarts
> will be
> > Neville Longbottom, and that he will teach Herbology.
> >
> Do we even know that Neville *is* good at Herbology? Or did 'Moody'
> just say that he was good at Herbology as a way of getting the
> Mediterranean aquatic plants book (its exact name has slipped my
> memory at the moment :) into Harry's dormitory?

Somewhere is GoF, before Moody takes Neville aside, Harry is startled
when Neveille raises his hand to answer a question in DADA because he
rarely volunteers an answer, except in Herbology, his best subject.

The big irony-- and I really noticed it, having been a teacher for six
years-- was that altough Moody's only interest was in getting the book
into Harry's room, his encouragement of Neville still had a striking
effect. Later in the chapter it states that Harry was not the only one
staying up late that night thinking about things. So was Neville.

I think Neville very likely has a great deal of ability which is all
laying dormant because of his lack of faith in himself-- a big stickler
is his relationship with his domineering grandmother, who doesn't allow
him much space to grow. I know from my own experience with teaching kids
that sometimes a little extra attention or praise for ANYTHING they have
done well can be the very thing that start to turn things around. I
played that card as much as possible as a teacher, and found it worked
well (as long as I wasn't a lightweight teacher who praised everything).

Herbology strikes me as a subject Neville would do well in-- he strikes
me as a earthy hands-on kind of person who would like a subject which
involves a lot of "doing". Transfiguration, by comparison, strikes me as
a very cerebral subject which requires a lot of memorization of things
which might not initially make concrete "sense", and potions.... eeesh,
well I remember how I did in Chemistry!

Suzanne/ Rainy Lilac