Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Veteran Teacher: Social Studies teacher Bob Parker, 55, is closing out a 32-year stint as not only Willow Glen High School's teacher, but as the school's boys and girls athletic director and boys golf coach. Parker will continue his position as head football coach next year.
Bob Parker is retiring after 32 years
Popular teacher and coach can't say goodbye just yet
By Susan Wiedmann
Popular social studies teacher Bob Parker is retiring in June after 32 years at Willow Glen High School (WGHS). By losing Parker to retirement, WGHS is also losing a successful athletic director for girls and boys sports.
In addition to overseeing the school's entire sports program, as an athletic director he has done a great deal of fundraising and community liaison work, as well as advising coaches when necessary.
This year WGHS won a championship in girls volleyball and a championship in girls cross country. Both the girls and boys teams won for track.
Parker has been such a popular and successful WGHS football, baseball, golf and softball coach during the past three decades that his decision as to how he will initially spend his retirement doesn't come as a complete surprise.
"First on the agenda is football," Parker says in his rapid-fire style. "I am committed to coaching football again at WGHS for another year. I could easily have been the athletic director again, but I really think the athletic director has to be on campus every minute." The campus has been a home away from home for Parker, who lives near WGHS.
"One reason I was hired here was that a social studies person had just left, and they were opening up a new JV football team, so they were looking for someone who could coach and teach social social studies," he says. He coached football for 11 years, and took a leave from it for about 10 years while his son and daughter were growing up.
"Then I went back and coached for seven years and thought I had gotten out of it for good," he says. "We won three championships, and we were in pretty good shape." He left, and within two years the WGHS football team had a 16-game losing streak. The parents and students convinced him to come back as the head coach in 2001.
"By then I was rested and I kind of missed it, too," Parker says. "So I came back, and last year, with virtually no seniors, we ended up 5-2 in the league and we have all these kids coming back. Expectations are high."
Parker loves teaching social studies, especially world geography and California studies for ninth-graders, who, he says, are at an age when they are looking forward to traveling. He says that he especially likes to teach freshmen because that way he has them as friends for four years.
"It's fun," Parker says about all the work involved in teaching and coaching. "I tell my kids that I don't think I've had a bad day in 32 years. I've never dreaded going to work.
He attributes his success to his energy, organizational skills and experience.
"I had a couple difficult years, time-wise, when I was both the boys and the girls athletic director, I was the varsity baseball coach, I was the varsity football coach, and I was the JV football coach, all at the same time, and teaching four social studies classes. It was pretty amazing," Parker recalls.
Sports have always been in his blood. He played football in high school and missed playing in the state's All Star football game because of an injury. As a Stanford student, he turned to baseball, playing until he threw his arm out. But it turned out that football was one of his lasting passions.
"There is something really enchanting about the X's and O's," Parker says of football. "It's such a physical game, but it's so cerebral at the same time."
Football coaching in itself is a full-time job, he admits. "In late spring we go six days for about an hour and a half or two after school. We need to check on grades, talk about the fundraiser, talk about our summer regimen and start getting the kids in shape."
From September through November, he videotapes the team's opponents during games on Friday nights and Saturdays when WGHS is not playing and then discusses strategies on Sundays with his team's other coaches.
Parker's teams won seven football championships. Parker also fondly remembers one football team that was 0-8 at the end of the year. When they won the last game, he says, "It was like winning the Super Bowl."
This year also marks the ninth annual golf tournament that Parker has organized to raise money for the WGHS sports programs. He thinks he has had the best of both worlds, spending half the day in the classroom teaching and half the day coaching sports. "What's neat now is a lot of my students are the sons and daughters of ex-students," he says. "Willow Glen has that kind of community, where people come back to roost."
Parker and his wife, Claudia--an English teacher at Leland High School, also retiring this year--were high school sweethearts in Bakersfield. They have traveled to Europe frequently and have a condo in Lake Tahoe. This summer they are planning to spend some time in Scottsdale, Ariz. "And luckily, the Giants will be in town, so we'll see them," he says.
The Parkers' retirements are the result of a teacher's union package. According to Parker, for teachers who have taught more than 30 years or who are older than 55, a cash incentive from the school district is being offered over five years, along with fully paid medical insurance for seven years. If Parker and other qualified teachers do not retire in June 2002, the bonus will not be offered to them again. The state is also giving the retiring teachers a $400 per month bonus for the rest of their lives, to encourage people to enter the teaching field and stay for 30 years.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
