As I have already revealed up here, I am a teacher.  As part of my job as a teacher, I lead tours of Boston.

For a long time, I shied away from taking the students to Harvard.  Not because it isn’t worth seeing or that they couldn’t possibly go there, but I didn’t know what to say about it.  Then one day I went on the official tour of the school.  And it was not that great.  They basically told me what I already know.  We didn’t go over to the other side of the campus on the Charles.  So I made a decision.  I would take the students on the tour myself and throw in Harvard facts I had learned over the years of just being here and hearing about Harvard itself.  The school has a huge part in American dreams and culture.  Why not share this with other people.

On the tour, we came upon the home of a house master.  At my college, these people were called resident assistants, not “house masters” and they lived in rooms, possibly with bathrooms.  At Harvard the house master gets an entire home.  Sweet!  When I told the students that this is where the house master lives, one of them exclaimed “you mean like Hagrid in Harry Potter?!?!?!?!”  And I thought to myself that Harvard is kind of magical in its own way.

Let’s enter that magical world: