(Ah this is all so cool oh my god!!!) It would probably have to be a boarding school, unless it only took students from the surrounding area. I'm pretty sure the wizarding population is fairly low (Hogwarts has about 1000 students iirc?) so a school would probably take kids from all over the region, not just the immediate area.
that's a good point. (*Dreams up slogans* Sage Canyon Academy: Where the southwest meets eldritch horrors from beyond...)
@boyacrossthestreet So, I went to a agricultural high school. We had a group of majors, like small animal science, large animal science, floriculture, aboriculture, mechanics, landscaping, and natural resources. Freshman year everyone went through a week of each major per semester, and then you picked which one you wanted at the end of the year. I was in small animal science, where everything wanted to kill you. Once you had a major, two or so hours each day were spent in your major class, taking notes and working with your stuff (for instance, I had to take care of rabbits, catch the escape artist birds, groom dogs, stuff like that.) The rest of the day was normal classes. Freshman and sophmores had major in the morning, juniors and seniors at the end of the day. One a week half an hour was taken out of major for gym. Those are the basics of my school. Some schools switched, like one week major, one week academics.
Technically, if we stole some ideas from this for a boarding school, you wouldn't even have to change the "where everything wanted to kill you".
ok my thoughts on houses! my proposed houses of eagle, bear, coyote, and jackrabbit map roughly, but not exactly, to the hogwarts houses like so: eagle = gryffindor coyote = slytherin jackrabbit = ravenclaw bear = hufflepuff i really feel like the hogwarts houses reflected a very british cultural feel, though, so i think the american school's houses would also be fairly culturally influenced, and would not be an exact match to the hogwarts houses. eagle/gryffindor is probably the closest match. eagles perhaps value wisecracks and gotchas a bit more than gryffindors do. coyote is less scheming than slytherin, more of a joker and a loner, and more likely to metaphorically dig under fences than metaphorically (or actually) poison people to achieve their goals. jackrabbit is a quick thinker, an intuitive leaper, a dead-end dodger. clever like ravenclaw, but more likely to be out investigating and snooping than holed up in the library. do not get in an argument with a jackrabbit, they will run circles around you. bear is a hard worker like hufflepuff -- and also, sometimes, an unstoppable juggernaut of stubbornness. they tend to be straightforward and slow to anger, but get one mad (say, by hurting their friends) and you might wanna just leave town. (i'm just playing with ideas here, please don't take this as some kind of gospel, anyone has other ideas pipe up)
I like the correlations here, actually. (especially since I, a slytherin, remain in coyote, which I liked [so yes i am biased]) Would we do House ghosts? ("Who's that?" "Oh, that's the Eagle house Ghost: Benjamin Franklin. He's still peeved over it not being 'Turkey House'")
oddly enough, i switch house. in hogwarts i'd be a slytherin, but in sage canyon i'd be a bear. i cannot fully explain this to myself, but it just... feels right.
*removes Lurker Cloak* This thread is really cool, and I thought you all might find this interesting: http://notbecauseofvictories.tumblr.com/tagged/chicago-school-for-sorcery *puts cloak back on, flies off into the starry void*
I really like that structure as something that differentiates SCA from Hogwarts- plus, a Southwestern, solidly American wizarding school would, I think, be more interested in really working with magic/being less in the realm of pure theory like the Ministry would like Hogwarts to be run (if I'm making sense?) Also, I think an American school would gives more of an element of choice- maybe it works the same way, with first years getting a taste of and learning about all the houses, and then (with teacher advice) declaring at end of their first year/start of second. Oh, also! Would this be a 7 year school, like Hogwarts, or a 4 year like most American schools?
I forgot about quodpot! (I might be one of those obnoxious students who will not stop talking about how the quidditch teams are doing though) @Arxon I like the hands on approach as well! And I think the being able to declare house - or having it chosen at the end of a year - might help avoid some of the more vicious echo-chambers that some of the Hogwarts houses turned into. I personally like the idea of a 7 year school.
@boyacrossthestreet I've always been a fan of resorting- like, sort once at the beginning and once at the end (and maybe in the middle). It encourages more empathy and understanding between houses, and avoids that echo chamber problem. I'm in favor of maybe a 6 year school- combining high school and middle school, so there's 6 years of gen education elementary and 6 years of magic education. (Is there general ed classes in SCA? Do they have math and english classes?)
or maybe you can apply to change houses, the way you can apply to change roommates in college, and i expect there'd be a whole lot of house-shuffling in middle school due to clique drama, and then people would pretty much settle down. i hear you on the hogwarts house echo chamber. it's like... 'my house right or wrong' becomes a thing, because questioning the sorting hat is just not a thing that occurs to 11-year-old kids, and so your group affiliation is everything. and i feel like that's not something that comes naturally to american culture, especially american teenagers; if some old hat told them the sky is blue they'd say "ha! bullshit!"
@Arxon for some reason I couldn't parse resorting right. No matter! I got it now. It also helps people understand that change is possible. I mean, I wouldn't expect an entire house to change after a few years, but I would expect at least a few to switch. That's actually one of my major bones to pick with the Hogwarts system (especially because the Weasley twins left school to start a business without any apparent business training?????). I like pretending that they were taught these things, it's just that JK didn't feel the need to talk about it because learning important life skills in school is assumed. I do feel like english could possibly be covered by the fact that you have to write huge papers for almost every class, though. @jacktrash Yes! Plus, eleven year old me's personality should not be used for determining my future social group. Ugh. (I'm pretty sure I would have started Gryffindor Eagle, moved to Ravenclaw Jackrabbit (very) briefly, and then settled in Slytherin Coyote.
I was thinking, maybe (like in emythos' school) there's a practical/major element to houses as well as the ideological one? I mean, there's already kind of a general association in Hogwarts- Slytherin/Potions, Gryffindor/DADA, Hufflepuff/Herbology, Ravenclaw/Charms- not to say they'd be exactly thee same, but maybe one gets a couple years-probably the first few- and then declares a "major"? Maybe they're sorted before then, maybe they aren't, I'm just throwing ideas out there. Applying to change houses would make a lot of sense. I think any group of teens is going to become super cliquey, but in general it would probably be easier for American students to look beyond house- although I guess we have to think about which American we're talking about. I mean, things for a neo-British model wizarding school in New England are going to be different from a Southwestern school from a West Coast school from a Northern School, because American culture varies greatly.
I feel like some of the staff might be imported from britain. But mostly so I get to hear someone call us "colonials". I like a similar class structure as Hogwarts, but could possibly be tweaked.
I have been trying to words my brain for the past hour but... why stick with only four houses? I think Acadamagia had six or eight Colleges? And there are so many critters with magic associations in America, and the Southwest in particular. (Ok, I'll admit it. I'm disappointed in the lack of crows. My corvid obsession is showing.)
1. What's Acadamagia? (I am apparently too lazy to look it up) 2. This proposal is very interesting and I like it. But I do think we should keep a cap on houses. However, since America has more people than the UK, (I think) it could work to have more houses than four. six?
Acadamagia is a text-based game that's basically Hogwarts in a high-fantasy world. It's pretty good, but really dense and you will fail hard and often at first. I'd dig up a link but alas! I am also too lazy.
