If you want your 15 minutes of fame these days but you can't think of anything other than claiming one of your students has commandeered a hot air balloon and is somewhere over the Atlantic, I have good news for you. As a NYC teacher, all you have to do is be a traitorous rat and dump on your fellow teachers.Ariel Sacks just recently did that, and she got considerable attention for it. I thought she was pretty bad, but she was nothing compared to fellow attention whore Matt Polazzo, who recently had an opinion piece published in the Daily News (which he refers to as the NY Daily Post on his Facebook page, which speaks to how accurate the guy is). You can read the article here, especially if you're a fan of illogical arguments and limited vocabularies.
To save time, Polazzo basically says that incompetent teachers, presumably those unlike him, should be fired immediately, while good teachers, presumably those like him, should stay. He never defines good or bad, but I bet he can tell the difference pronto.
I was tipped off to Polazzo's Facebook page by an alert reader, and it tells us a lot about the guy. Other than being unable to identify the newspaper he was published in, we receive many other insights into his mind. For example, the page is called "Team Polazzo" and has a nice picture of a pirate instead of his actual face. What's really unusual is how many teachers have commented on the article, including one who says that they should all wear tee shirts with the words "Team Polazzo" written on them. Personally, I think they could save a lot of time and money by just buying a bunch of "I'm with Stupid" tees.
So, why did Polazzo write a piece trashing his colleagues? One can only guess, but attention whore suggested itself to me immediately. Also, I'd bet his physique isn't quite what Survivor (or even Tool Academy) is looking for, and he most likely flunked the exam for Are Your Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, so he had to look for another avenue for self promotion.
To be honest, Polazzo doesn't bother me that much. The education world has always had bottom feeding ass kissers who look to further their careers by smooching the wrinkled buttocks of the Kleins of the world. What bothers me is that he has followers. In a similar vein, I can understand why the world has Charles Manson types, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why others want to be part of the family.
Since Polazzo wants to tear up the teacher's contract, I assume he has the courage of his convictions. When his supervisor writes him up one day, I assume he will immediately resign. Right, Mr. Polazzo? When that day comes, I bet he'll wish he'd pulled a balloon boy stunt instead. But with that much hot air, he'd probably leave the Earth's atmosphere. Not that I'd object.
UPDATE: To clarify, the FB page mentioned above is a team page, and not Mr. Polazzo's personal FB page. Sorry for any confusion.
