‘One of the things we are guilty of . . . is that we don’t give our kids opportunities to fail.’

Bob Hayes has been teaching science at Millikan Junior High School in Sherman Oaks for 22 years. He and his wife, Mayilyn, a substitute teacher, and their three children live in Chatsworth.

I began teaching at about 11 or 12 years old when I was in the Boy Scouts, in Lafayette, Ind. When you’re out camping, there are woodcraft skills--knot tying, compass skills, building a fire--those kinds of things that one person teaches to another.

I graduated from Purdue in February, 1963. It was a very bad winter at a time of the year when jobs were not plentiful. There were three areas interviewing in Chicago: the Chicago-Detroit area, New York and Los Angeles. When I went to the interviews, it was 17 degrees below zero.

At the Los Angeles interview, they put a map of the school system in front of me and asked me to select five areas in order of preference. I didn’t know anything about Los Angeles, so I took a pencil from behind my ear, looked at the map and closed my eyes and picked five areas. About a month later I received a contract. I’ve been in the Valley ever since.

I don’t think teachers get enough credit for being really good at what they do because they make it look so natural. A teachers works from 8 to 3. That looks easy, but you don’t see him at 7:30 when he’s out there on supervision at the bike racks, or supervision in the hallways, running off to make that first class and the extracurricular activities.

Those duties are hard, but they have their impact. When I go out to the bike rack in the morning, I have a cup of coffee with me, and I say “Hi” to the kids when they come in. When they see me on campus or in class, they are going to relate to me as a person who knows them and is concerned about them.

We get very little time to ourselves. It takes time to be creative. You don’t have time to be creative if you have five minutes between classes to prepare for the next class, 38 kids just left and 38 more are coming in. Our lunch break is rather short, 30 minutes. It’s eat the food and run.

I have the computer club on Friday, and I give up my lunch period and I don’t get paid for it. I’m doing it because it’s fun. I’m doing it because there are kids out there who need it. Extracurricular activities are such an important part of motivation and attracting and keeping kids in school.

I’m just appalled that a kid has to have no fails to participate in extracurricular activities. One of the things we are guilty of as parents and teachers is that we don’t give our kids opportunities to fail. Gosh, we learn so much by failure. So much of science has been learned by trial and error. I learned how tight I could torque the nut down on my old ’36 Plymouth by tightening one down too tight. And I paid for it dearly. My Dad let me fail, though. And he didn’t make me feel badly for it.

I know kids who would like to take, perhaps, algebra, a little more difficult math, and they’re so hesitant about taking it because if they fail then they can’t play basketball or football, or they can’t be in drama or a music program. We’ve had L.A. city bands that have been decimated at the end of the semester just before band competition by this no-fail rule. That means that we are asking kids to take the safe way out.

I’ve never thought of being off work in the summertime as being a plus. It seems to me to be forced unemployment. For that two months I have to get out there and hustle to make extra money by whatever means to get through the summer.

The low salary scale during the last 10 to 15 years has worked to the detriment of attracting eager young college people to go into education. I’ve been tempted to get out. But I guess there are things in life that are more important than money. You really can’t put a price tag on that feeling you have about yourself when you’ve done a really good job working with kids.