Solidarity

The press is back on a teacher witch hunt once again, probably the last one of the Bloomberg years.

Articles have come from both the Daily News and the Post smearing teachers in the rubber room as perverts, criminals and/or freaks.

Those of us who work in the system know that anybody can go to the rubber room, all it takes is an allegation and an administrators who wants to get rid of you.

The allegations can be ludicrous and false, but that won't stop you from being hauled out of school, sent to an isolated site somewhere to await a hearing that just may never come, and smeared in the press by propaganda writers like Ben "Where Are The Perverts?" Chapman.

With all the craziness that is going on in the system these days, all the craziness brought by the Common Core and the ADVANCE teacher evaluation system, all the craziness brought by the 4-6 Danielson observations and the NYC performance assessments that have kids writing about how great our Dear Leader, Mike Bloomberg, is, I forget to write how I think teachers need to be express solidarity with our colleagues who have been targeted by their administrators and smeared by the press.

It's important to express this solidarity because the truth is, there but for the grace of the universe (and a sane principal and assistant principal) go any of us.

I have seen good teachers, good people targeted and sent packing on bogus allegations over the years.

I have seen some of these same people smeared in the press (a few were lucky and managed to avoid that notoriety.)

It is an awful system we have here - an allegation is enough to convict you in the court of public opinion as run by our city plutocrats at the Post and News.

For some reason, the scum in the press who write these accounts have no empathy for the subjects that they seek to destroy with their smears, no idea that given different circumstances they too could be unfairly accused and destroyed by false allegations.

But I do have empathy for these teachers and wish to express my solidarity with them.