MOJAVE, Calif. — At Mojave Elementary, you'll find one classroom that will transport you somewhere magical.
"So my classroom is Harry Potter, Hogwarts. It is as little over the top," said Randi Elmore.
Go from platform 9 3/4 and into the World of Wizardry in Mrs. Elmore's class.
"Harry Potter to me was my safe place growing up. It was the place I could go and know that I was wanted and loved and that I was included. So when I came to work here and I started working with the students and I saw that they needed a safe place to go as well. Because a lot of our kids have hard home lives and hard situations going on," said Mrs. Elmore.
"She makes her classroom fun and makes us feel comfortable," said third grader Nathan Cervantes.
The second and third graders received their acceptance letters and wands at back to school night. It's all there from the flying keys, to the house flags and the sorting hat.
"We have our forbidden forest which is probably my favorite thing. with our flying Angela which the Weasley's got stuck in the Whomping Willow"
And of course, the students are sorted into competing houses working together for house points.
"I had one girl's mom who was like I’m Hufflepuff. She needs to be in Hufflepuff. I really want her to be in Hufflepuff," said Mrs. Elmore. "So she’s sitting in Hufflepuff because how can I deny that request of a familial house."
"Every time a house has the most we are like, 'yeah we are going to win.'" said second grader Mikaila Gonzalez. "We get really excited because whoever wins, they get a prize."
The classroom is also complete with a trolley with prizes, a house-elf themed chore board and Dobby's socks used as whiteboard erasers.
"We do transfiguration class which is our stem bins...we do potions class where we make slime and things like that," said Mrs. Elmore.
The classroom has a Daily Prophet bulletin board, a Hagrid Reading Hut and even class goals.
"When you have kids that are proud of their classroom, they are excited to be at school more often and they now want to read books that they probably didn’t want to read before," said Mrs. Elmore.
Now it seems like the class cannot get enough.
"Our first trip to the library we completely wiped the library out of every Harry Potter book that they had," said Mrs. Elmore. "So that is our newest concern in our classroom is that there is not enough harry potter books to go around for everybody."
And as the kids get to know Hogwarts better through their reading, they are spellcasting their own iedas.
"'Well why don’t we have a three headed dog guarding our treasure chest?' And I'm going 'Oh I guess that’s a good idea,'" said Mrs. Elmore. "I was on amazon last night ordering one."
Thought it might just be fiction, Mrs. Elmore hopes it will all have a real lasting impression.
"Important I think the lessons that they teach in the books about friendship and kindness and understanding," she said. "Standing up for what you think is right even when everyone else tells you that you are wrong. And those are really the concepts that we learn in school."
