Matt’s Class

Okay. We’re back. Today we worked on the prompts we started yesterday, and I introduced the idea of “levels” of questions. I think I even compared them to the layers of an onion. How…original.

But on this recording, you get to hear something that happens quite frequently: Right in the middle of a lesson, I suddenly understand what I’m actually intending to teach, and I realize that I don’t quite know enough about it to actually teach about it. In this case, when I started talking about forming questions, all these memories about Bloom’s Taxonomy and these lectures about heuristics I heard in my last year of college came flooding into my brain, along with an old idea I had about how useful it would be to try to teach this to kids. But it was a bit of a problem, because I was already in the middle of class when I finally realized that’s what I was trying to do, so I had to make it up as I went.

That happens to me a lot. Every once in a while, I actually know what I’m going to do before I do it. But not usually. My usual lesson plans are just stop-gaps meant to calm my nerves because I freak out when class starts and I don’t have some sort of plan in front of me. But the sad fact is, I’m incompetent when it comes to lesson planning, and I feel bored when I know everything that’s going to happen before it ever does. So. Fire me.

Here’s the class:

Listen Now:

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Carp. I mean, Crap! I somehow deleted the actual files from both classes I recorded today, so all you pod people get is an executive summary of the discussion and assignment I recorded all alone in the classroom after everyone had gone. It would have been sad to watch me teach to the silent, empty room. Slightly less sad than watching me trying to teach the silent, full room.

Anyway, today’s episode is only for the hardcore listeners (i.e., actual students who really need to know what happened).

MT

Listen Now:

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Okay. This is more like it.

I think today’s recording represents a pretty standard Matt Thomas class. It’s also 3rd period, and they didn’t know I was recording today. It helps.

Anyway, today it’s all about reinforcing the writing instruction we’ve been working through in the past weeks, as well as thinking about “larger than life” characters, or what Melville calls “pageant creatures.” Who are they? Why are they the way they are? Is it nice to have people like that around?

Enjoy:

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I got all confused today about how 19th century whalemen were paid, and how much the shares were worth, relatively speaking. And for some reason, when Capt. Bildad says “777th lay” I kept thinking he was saying the 277th lay, and that got me all tripped up. Now I’m supposed to know about the financing of a whaling expedition. And subtle religio-numerological references.

This job is hard.

Plus, the podcast has gone to the class’ collective head, and now half the time they’re mugging for the microphone. Maybe tomorrow I’ll use 4th period for recording, an after-lunch class so subdued by unfortunate food choices laden with trans fats and empty processed sugars that they are utterly comatose upon arrival in this room. I’m not sure, though. Reading Moby Dick to myself surrounded by the languishing youth is sort of amusing to me, but it loses its charm in the audio-only format.

Anyway, day 2:

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Okay, here we go. I know it’s too quiet. I don’t have a recording lackey, so I’ll try bumping up all the levels tomorrow to see what happens. Also, we were all kind of self-conscious about the recording, and the students said I was being more conscientious than usual. But mostly, I think I come across in the recording as a wheedling nag.

But, whatever.

Today’s class was dedicated to being reflective students and teachers, while simultaneously filling in the Wide World Internets on what we’ve be doing for the past 5 weeks.

And away we go!

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i can’t start recording the class until my studio boom mic stands arrive. in the meantime, we’ve been having rollicking, brilliant, far-ranging discussions about ralph waldo emerson and the place of humans in the natural world. you should feel left out, world.

never fear. the equipment is slated to arrive tomorrow. and then, hopefully, we go live.

mt

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