Matt’s Class

Welcome to the new website.

As in the last incarnation of a Matt Thomas website, this one will be a clearinghouse for all the information you'll need to complete the work of this class.

But with the new site, there's so much more. Starting next week, this site will host a World Wide Internets iPod audio broadcast, or "podcast" for short, of the proceedings of my 11th grade English class, in which, against all the advice of my peers and my own professional judgement, we will be reading Moby Dick for the first time.

Why the podcast? There are two reasons:

First, I believe that kids need the freedom to irresponsibly skip school, yet still be coddled enough by sappy-hearted, soft-headed, probably Liberal, teachers who will enable their irresponsibility by still making it possible for them to pass the class. Well. There are other reasons, too. Like the fact that at the end of a school day I typically find myself sitting slumped in a chair in the lowering light of evening, a small trickle of drool wending its way down my chin, my brain utterly empty, a howling void that has sucked in and obliterated any scrap of knowledge I might have once posessed about the ethnographic-allegorical meanings of Queeqeg's tattoos, or some other such literary knowledge. I need reminders, and so do you, dear students. You're going to be writing about this stuff each week, and this will help you think of things to write about.

The other reason for the podcast is to remind politicians and parents, as well as education advisers and experts, about what an actual classroom is like. Even those of you thought-leaders and decision makers out there who have direct experience in the classroom eventually decided to leave that daily grind in favor of a different one, and as soon as any of us step out of the actual classroom it's all too easy for a sanitized, idealized version of "school" to take over in the mind. We may need this fantasy about school in order to dream up "best practices" and curriculum standards and statistically meaningful standardized tests, but it doesn't have much to do with acual people doing the actual work of learning. So this is a reminder, and perhaps a wake-up call.

Crap. If it's a wake-up call, I guess it's my fault. But here we go. Let's flip the classroom inside out. And if any of you experts have any suggestions or reprimands for me, descend for a moment from your towers of ivory to leave me comments. Embedded as I am, I have no idea what's actually happening here.

So I say to one and all, to the whole wide world, breathlessly watching my every move every moment via the Infotainment Superhighway Webnets:

Welcome back to school!

-- MT