My family loves Harry Potter. Our oldest borrowed more books from her school library last year than anyone else in the building, but Hogwarts is still her favorite world. She falls asleep to the voice of Jim Dale reading the audiobooks.<\/p>\n
I watched the fifth film with her again not long ago, and took particular notice of a scene where Harry bests his friend Hermione in a lab assignment because he has a textbook annotated by a mystery figure<\/a>. Hermione becomes frantic when the instructions in the book fail her.<\/p>\n Hermione has a hard time going off-text. We can all remember this book-smart student from high school, if we weren\u2019t that student ourselves.<\/p>\n J.K. Rowling addresses the larger theme of her sixth story<\/a> here. In the fictional wartime setting of the novel, Harry, Hermione, and all of their young friends face grave decisions for the first time in their lives. They will each break the rules and encourage that rebellion in one another to do the right thing.<\/p>\n The book is full of moments in which they learn to improvise.<\/p>\n The scene reminded me of a similar experience with my own father, the quietly gifted engineer. He had run into trouble installing a new kitchen faucet and asked me to look at the instructions. I eventually solved the issue by ignoring them.<\/p>\n I remember thinking whomever had written the instructions did so poorly and you could see the answer in the instructions only if you let go of them. I also remember wondering if my father was too beholden to the rules.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think this now. Dad accomplished too much as an engineer and a father not to grasp and use improvisation throughout his life. I\u2019m sure there are many similar moments when I\u2019ve needed someone to push me beyond the diagram.<\/p>\n I imagine this is more of a universal human flaw, and not even a flaw. I could\u2019ve just as easily broken our faucet by ignoring the directions. One person\u2019s daring is another person\u2019s recklessness.<\/p>\n Still, I meet this important moment all the time while teaching my courses\u2014the crossroads of formula and creativity. The students who struggle most with my open lessons want clear instruction\u2014of course they do, in a classroom. But again this semester, one student called me on the \u201cvagueness<\/a>\u201d of my assignments and then praised their \u201cflexibility<\/a>\u201d once she struggled through the first few.<\/p>\n I found a better way to explain the intention behind my open assignments. I\u2019m not assigning \u201cinstructions<\/a>\u201d at all; I\u2019m assigning \u201cprompts.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the perfect word, too.<\/a> Prompt has a writing connotation, a computer association, and a physical or practical application. We all know \u201cwriting prompts,\u201d where the task is nothing more than a stepping-off point. A command prompt is \u201ca symbol or series of characters at the beginning of a line that indicates the system is ready to receive input.<\/a>\u201d And finally, in the worlds of performance and public speaking, \u201cprompters\u201d assist someone hesitating to speak on stage.<\/p>\n