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Matt Seybold Profile picture
@MEASeybold
Aug 7 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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I followed my curiosity about Walz’s teaching career down a wormhole this morning. This thread just scratches the surface.

But I have two more pressing things to say about what I learned.

1/2
1.) Tim Walz taught in the Alliance School District for only 4 years, but somehow in that short time he coached three football teams, men’s & women’s basketball, & middle school girls track. He also launched foreign exchange & summer abroad programs, & a scholarship…

2/6 Image
He co-curated (with his future wife) the local history museum. All while serving on that National Guard & getting additional teaching certificates from nearby colleges.

Tim Walz was that kind of indefatigable teacher. We all know & love one. Many of you are ones.

3/6 Image
Tim Walz was by all indications a teaching All-Star. He was doing experiential, curational pedagogy before there was such a thing.

That said…

2.) If Tim was an All-Star, Gwen Walz (Whipple) was MVP. Holy Shit. She started winning state teaching awards like instantly.

4/6 Image
She launch a speech & debate team her first year. By year three it was top in the state, winning every category. Her team had 40+ students. The school board had special meetings just to approve her budget!

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She also coached the cheerleading team, co-directed the annual musical, & gave piano lessons.

The Walzes are so my people. I can hardly bear it.

I’M ALL THE WAY IN! Image
If you like this thread, you'll probably like my podcast.

marktwainstudies.com/twentytwentyfo…

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More from @MEASeybold

Matt Seybold Profile picture
Nov 9
Mark Twain was the Taylor Swift of 1876. He was the most celebrated cultural figure in the US, & his friend William Dean Howells believed a Twain endorsement might swing the election. The problem was, Twain hated all the presumptive candidates. 🧵
Twain had witnessed many of them in action during his brief stint as a DC political correspondent. It wasn’t until the surprise nomination of Rutheford Hayes during the contentious GOP convention that Twain became inclined to get involved.
Hayes was an Ohio governor removed from the federal Spoils System. Twain believed the Spoils System was responsible for all that ailed US governance, including the failures of Reconstruction. He was part of a contingent of public intellectuals who wanted civil service reform.
Read 8 tweets
Matt Seybold Profile picture
Aug 7
Maybe we have underrated Coach Walz.

Tag yourself. I'm "quiet girl always reading some book about Queen Elizabeth." Image
Of course I found the yearbook from which the NYT stole that photo. Image
Did he ever share some experiences from all over the world. That year he took students on "a return visit to Fosham #1 Middle School, where he previously taught."

Accompanying him, "Miss Gwen Whipple," who later that year would become Gwen Walz. Image
Read 7 tweets
Matt Seybold Profile picture
Jul 4
Mark Twain hated the Fourth of July.

He was often invited to speak at Independence Day festivities. His audiences assumed that his reliably unpatriotic remarks were tongue-in-cheek jests.

But he meant that shit.

1/9
They laughed heartily when he said, in Keokuk in 1886, that the best thing a speaker could do on such an occasion was sit down, which he then did.

They laughed in 1899 when he suggested the holiday was "only sacred" to "the surgeon, the undertaker, & the insurance offices."

2/9
They laughed in 1907 when he said, "The Declaration of Independence was written by a British subject…there was not an American in the country on that day except the Indians out on the plains."

3/9
Read 10 tweets
Matt Seybold Profile picture
May 30
What role can global celebrities play in responding to genocide? Does it matter what Beyonce or Taylor Swift says about Gaza?

In the aftermath of his 1905 world tour, Mark Twain was likely the most famous cultural figure on Earth.

What did he do with it?

1/9 Image
While this was not true for the entirety of his career, from 1905 forward Twain understood celebrity as intrinsically political. What was the point if not to leverage it against other forms of power?

In Jan. of 1906, he wrote, "Czars and Leopolds are my quarry these days."

2/9
The latter was a reference to his then work in progress, "King Leopold's Solilquy," a satire of Belgian occupation & extraction in the Congo, narrated in the Belgian King's voice, both admitting to many atrocities & whining about the publicizing of them in Anglophone press.

3/9
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Read 9 tweets
Matt Seybold Profile picture
Mar 3
A few people have asked me to parse this. Here are the bullet points.

1. It is much more accurate to call this a 'shift' than a 'cliff.' The number of college-eligible graduates is not going to change. The only sharp decline is among white-identified prospective students.
2. The 'enrollment cliff' is being promoted & literally sold to HigherEd administrators by private consultancies & proprietary data aggregators, all of whom are owned by private equity firms, in most cases KKR, Blackstone, & Vista.
3. The same private equity firms are deeply (one might say overly) invested in EdTech ventures whose solvency depends on extracting increasingly large contracts from colleges. Many of these ventures are being marketed as efficient replacements for labor (though they aren't).
Read 7 tweets
Matt Seybold Profile picture
Feb 28, 2023
The crisis in the humanities is the crisismongering of the humanities.

This is what happens when strategic decision-makers in admin are uniformly recruited from places (business schools, econ depts, executive suites, etc.) where economic rationality reigns without rival.

1/5
Ignorant of their reflexive relationship to market forecasts, when they see a forecast, they never think

1.) Is this accurate?
2.) Can it be prevented?
3.) What needs to be protected from random whims of the market?

Instead, they rush to "get out front" of the forecast.

2/5
The forecast is treated as a foregone conclusion & its inevitability is cited ad nauseum to justify budgeting, staffing, marketing, recruiting, etc. etc.

The decisions made in anticipation of the forecasted change actually bring about the forecasted conditions.

3/5
Read 5 tweets

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