High School turning into rec league!

Back Foot Slider and 19Coach, I never know when I've crossed the line and so, I deleted that post.  Every word of it was/is true.  I'll paraphrase some of that post.

The statement was that we(Teachers/Coaches) don't know how good we have it.  I have been a teacher for 28 years but I didn't start out as a teacher.  I am a certified welder and worked in a factory for 5 years as a welder.  All that time, I worked the midnight shift so that I could go to college during the day to become a teacher.  That plant closed and so, I became a machinist.  I worked as a machinist and as a member of the United Machinist and Aerospace Workers Union for four years.  From there, I drove a truck, drove a forklift in a factory, and worked in two different types of foundries.  I was a "no bake" technician in a casting foundry and a "specialist" in an aluminum foundry where I had top security clearance and wrote protocols for department of defense projects.  From there I became the #1 salesman in the U.S.A. for the top division of Zales Corporation.  These were great achievements for someone who was born the son of a sharecropper in Kentucky and of parents that were both illiterate.  All that time, I was working midnight and evening shifts trying to earn my teaching degree.  It took over a decade to do so.   I don't know how good I have it?

In that time, I have received over a dozen teaching awards, have been recognized nationally for creating one of the first distance learning websites in this country, and have been nominated for national teaching awards.  As a coach, I have won a couple of state titles and have coached the #1 team in the nation a couple of times.  I have coached LL, HS and have coached internationally for the U.S.A. in the former Soviet Union and I don't know how good I have it?  

There were other things I pointed out as well in that deleted post.  Those things included being a mandated reporter and dealing with child abuse.  Being called at all hours of the night to go to someone's home and intervene.  I gave some example that maybe I should not have done.  In short, I've physically fought parents, I've had a knife pulled on me and one of my players by a dad.  I've have players that were cut come to my house to scare my family when they knew that I was away at games.  Well, I've seen the worse in people.

When I'm told that I don't know how good I have it, I wonder how many times someone who would say that has been asked to speak at a funeral for one of their students and/or players?  I have done that way too many times.  In fact, it tears me up.  Yet, how do you turn down a parent?  I've seen my daughter clean out her old coloring books when she was in high school and break down crying.  She came across a page in that coloring book colored by Erin.  Erin played basketball for me.  She died driving home to get ready for Homecoming.  I spoke at Erin's funeral and have her picture up in my classroom.  How do you speak at a funeral for one of your baseball players and sitting in the front row are 4 of his brothers that you coached?  

Again, I was told I don't know how good I have it.  Believe me, I know.  I also know this, when you lose in the business world, you might lose a client.  If I mess up in my profession, I lose a kid.  

I apologize for the rant.  

Take care,

Darrell

Edited to add:

In my deleted post, I mentioned that I always have students lined up at my door before school begins.  One asked to get out of another class to talk to me.  She is from the Ukraine and is a foreign exchange student.  She wants to know why America has abandoned her country.  She wants to know what will happen to her family?  I don't have any of those answers.  So she cries.  Another day of teaching has begun.  Although I know teaching is full of peaks and valleys, there are times like this when I don't have these answers that I feel like the greatest failure in the world.  

Here's what is happening (at least in my neck of the woods). Things have changed drastically in the past 20 years. When I was a kid, we played LL. My parents payed the $20 or so for the season and stayed out of the way. They hardly ever even came to the games. In fact, very few of the parents came to the games regularly. then we moved to high school. Everything was paid for out of the school budget, except gloves.

Today, parents pay thousands in youth ball. The investment (if you want to call it that) is huge and they, of course feel they should have a say in how things are run. Because of the nature of the beast, they do get a say. Now they move onto high school, where the budget doesn't even come close to covering costs, so money comes from the parents and their efforts in the booster club.  Because nothing has really changed from youth ball to high school - they are still required to commit a lot of effort and money - they still think they get a say in how the program is run.  AD's add to this, because they need the money the parents bring in, so they have to listen to their crap. Twenty-five years ago, the AD would have told the parents to go take a hike. They can't really do that anymore.