Here's A Teacher Who Should Be Rubber-Roomed

In the middle of this extraordinary New York Daily News piece explaining why Congressman Michael Grimm - the guy who threatened to throw a NY1 reporter off the balcony of the Capitol and is facing a 20-count indictment for corruption - is likely to win re-election from his Staten Island constituents is this:

Many said they thought Grimm showed nothing more than understandable frustration when he threatened Michael Scotto of NY1, after Scotto asked Grimm about the federal investigation of him.

“At least he gave (the reporter) a warning,” said Judy Psaotas, 49, a waitress at the Annadale Terrace Diner. “I would have just thrown him off.”

Psaotas was among several voters interviewed who appear to connect with Grimm on a visceral level.

I don’t like anybody, and I like him,” Psaotas said. “That’s not just because of the way he looks, because God knows, he is eye candy. I think he’s a man first. Before a politician, he’s a man.”

A 37-year-old teacher having breakfast at the diner put it more bluntly: “He’s bang-able,” she giggled, adding that she planned to vote for him.

The guy who threatened to toss NY1 reporter Michael Scotto off the Capitol balcony and faces 20 corruption counts deserves re-election because he's "bang-able"?

Anybody who says something like this is clearly too stupid to be in a classroom with children.

I'm only sort of kidding here.

Sort of.

In any case, it's beginning to look like the Bay Ridge/Staten Island area is going to re-elect a Congressman with violent tendencies who is facing a 20-count indictment and a State Senator under investigation for corruption by US attorney Preet Bharara.

Well, I guess in the end, most politicians are corruptible and contemptible.

In this Bay Ridge/Staten Island district, they're just more open about that and voters are okay with it all.

I guess that's nice.

Not sure it's "bang-able" though.

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.