American schools, why do I want to work there exactly?

OK, for the second time in as many days, I've found a story that shows makes me think "How exactly am I not good enough to teach in this country?" The full link to the AP story is below.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FLAG_INCIDENT?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

To sum it up, a Hispanic student in an Idaho high school brought a Mexican flag to school to celebrate cinco de mayo. His gym teacher (already a bad sign) confiscated the flag and placed it in the garbage can!!! This is the conversation as the student recounts it:
Teacher: Give me the flag.
Student: What's the problem?
T: The problem is that we're in the United States, not in Mexico.

Teacher tosses flag in trash. Tells student he can get it back at the end of the day.
After school, the student returned to collect his flag as promised.

S: Where's my flag?
T: What, the US flag?
S: No, the one for Mexico.

Student retrieves his flag from the garbage.

Please excuse me while I vomit.

I admit to some bias here. First, as the son of an immigrant and in many ways an immigrant myself, I sympathize with the student. Being American doesn't erase what you or your ancestors were before and you should be free to express pride in your heritage. Also, I am of the opinion that there are two types of teachers in this world, teachers and P.E. teachers. I've had to take teacher prep courses with future coaches and they are a completely different animal.

My favorite part of this disgrace is the justification from the coach. He claims he merely placed the flag in the trash because he had nowhere else to store it. I've heard some interesting ways to get the admin to give you a larger desk or office, but this one takes the cookie. The coach then claimed that he took the flag to protect the student from "white kids" who would harass and/or attack the student.

So, his defense of his racism is: We have a lot of racists in this school, they might do something worse. Oooookkkkkkkaaaaaaayyyy. Does none of this indicate that you have a larger underlining problem you ought to be addressing?

Then again, it did happen in Idaho. Many times when I've been to Idaho, I've noticed not only the distinct lack of diversity, I've noticed a lot of pride in that fact.

Sad.