Double Potions

[Jean Lamb]

No: HPFGUIDX 188499

Double Potions is a longer class held less often because it's a _lab_ class.
My husband teaches chemistry, so I know this one! The teacher has to do a
lot of setting up (making sure the right ingredients are out where the
students can get them, with 20% added for wastage, unless you're doing
microchem), lecture, and occasional demonstrations (I suspect Ms. Rowling
had chemistry at a fairly low level a long, long time ago). NEWT level
classes more than likely include analysis of both known and unknown
substances (the final for Advanced Chemistry here is the Grand Unknown. Mike
makes up a plywood board, and the first person to solve the Grand Unknown
gets to pick the center design, while everyone who solves it gets to sign
the board and add little slogans, decency etc. permitting). He also does
demonstrations, holds night labs in the spring so that kids can come in and
catch up on work, and assigns worksheets and teaches kids how to properly
fill out a lab report. It's a class that is a lot more work for a teacher
than say, Charms or History of Magic, where the kids come in with a) wands
at the ready, and/or b) pillows. Given that Potions is a required class for
the first five years, Snape likely has a class load of several hundred
students (assuming numbers given for students at Hogwarts are anywhere near
what have been stated in interviews). My husband starts contemplating the
suicide hot line whenever his load goes over 150 students. Remember, for
each student, the teacher has to maintain a separate file of grades, read
essays, grade essays, look at lab reports, try to interpret the handwriting,
try to guess who is copying from who (though with the Trio, and with Draco &
the Goons, I suspect that was not really hard), give tests, grade tests
(with no computerized assistance), assist parents with any inquiries, and
since it's a boarding school, write end of year letters to parents. In
Potions, one has to calculate the ingredients required for each and every
Potion for each and every class, add whatever percentage seems right, be
ready to call the Fire Department or put down some major spells even when
kids _aren't_ trying to set the place on fire to steal stuff out of the
cabinet, breathe in all the fumes (one suspect Snape's liver looks like a
toxic waste dump) of everyone's mistakes, and be head of Slytherin in the
bargain (with the usual quota of pregnant students, gambling students,
drinking students, students caught stealing, students who are suicidal,
students who are homicidal, and that's without adding who's working for the
Dark Lord for Daddy's sake). And oh, yes, let's add magic into the equation
here; students are fully capable of making their own potions on the sly, and
some may well end up addicted to them. 
 
Just a look at what a teacher's workload really is, especially at a boarding
school where they can't go home and scream at the stupidity of Manchester
United to let off steam. 

Jean Lamb

Do UPS workers learn Parceltongue?

tlambs1138 at charter.net

excessiveperky at LJ

 

 


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