Teaching a bunch of middle schoolers was not a difficult task a couple of decades ago. Doing the same thing today is a whole different story. That was the time of passing notes, and this is the era of smartphones. Forcing these school kids to focus on class is almost as difficult as walking on broken glass. Okay, it is not that bad, but it is undoubtedly troublesome. However, some teachers are just so brilliant that they make teaching look like a piece of cake. One such person was Kyle Hubler, a middle school teacher from Oregon, who turned his classroom into an insanely detailed version of Hogwarts. The Harry Potter-inspired classroom is like a dream coming true. It is filled with owls, wands, and costumes.
At the Evergreen Middle School in Hillsboro, Hubler is a teacher of seventh and eighth graders. Kyle first added a few Harry Potter elements to a classroom last year. When the school year ended, he was informed that they would be moving to a different classroom for the year 2017-2018. Then, Hubler went all the way to turn the entire classroom into a tiny version of Hogwarts, excluding magic and quidditch of course!
Maybe Hubler himself wanted to sit in such a classroom when he was a kid. He told HuffPost that,
“As a kid I remember my biggest dream was to go to Hogwarts someday, but I knew that I could never truly go there and that was a disappointment to feel like I had to give up on that dream. When I became a teacher and started talking to my students about their dreams, I realized that I had the power to make my childhood wish come true. It wasn’t necessarily in the way I imagined as a kid, but it still feels like I made my 12-year-old self proud and fulfilled that kids dream. I want my students to feel like they can achieve their dreams as well, no matter how big or magical.”
Many of the Harry Potter accessories in the classroom were sourced from his collection that he began in middle school. He went on to buy many decorations from hardware stores, garage sales, and Facebook marketplace. He pretty much visited every place where he could get his hands on any Harry Potter element. Spending each penny from his pocket and by working more than 70 hours over the course of five weeks, this teacher turned a dream into a reality.
The walls of the classroom are decorated with banners of all four Hogwarts houses, stone-brick wallpaper for the castle-like look, leather-bound books, quill pens, the complete set of Quidditch balls, a part of Ollivander’s Wand Shop, and a silver Pensive. Of course, no Harry Potter themed place goes anywhere without the “Platform 9¾” element. The platform sign at the entrance is adorned with a poster, quoting Dumbledore’s beginning of the year speech.
It was a source of sheer excitement for his students.
“I heard audible gasps and saw jaws drop to the floor. They were scrambling around the room to inspect every little detail and were excitedly showing their peers what they discovered,” Hubler recalls.
The middle school teacher’s spectacular work gathered online popularity pretty quick. However, Kyle says that impressing people was not his motive. He loves Harry Potter and even more than that, his job. He used his love for Harry Potter to get better at the job he loved.
Have a look at the little Hogwarts for yourself. You will be in awe of the detailing that went into making this classroom.
