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Bill Osborne

Children are Born Persons

We are called

We are a community of people seeking to live out our faith wherever we go. In our families. In our workplaces. In every daily encounter. This article is the first in a series on how people of St. Paul live out our callings to be Christ-bearers in the world. What’s your story? How do you take your faith with you? In worship on Discipleship Sunday, April 20, we’ll celebrate how we each serve God through our ordinary labors. Now meet Bill —

Planning new elementary school curriculum and managing state and federal grants consume Bill Osborne’s workdays. In the 1912-vintage brick building that houses administrative offices for the Rock Island-Milan Public School District, paperwork, systems, and meetings are the primary stuff of Bill’s daily work.

But look over Bill’s shoulder. Scattered on the wall are photos of kids — smiling in sunglasses, on the track and in the science lab, posing by a locker or in a library, in theatre productions and marching band.

From the smallest Head Start child to the proud gowned graduate, kids are Bill Osborne’s passion.

“Children are born persons,” says Bill. That has been his mantra — from his first job as a second-grade teacher in Silvis to today as assistant superintendent for instruction and school improvement.

“Children might be little bodies, but you respect their minds,” Bill says. “You don’t talk baby talk or water down stories.” He assumes that every child has the capacity to learn.

Bill’s faith gives him a daily framework. “The reason that children are born persons is because they’re creatures of God. That’s the foundation of my belief. We have value as part of creation. You know the old bumper sticker: ‘God don’t make junk.’”

It’s a big surprise to Bill that he has landed in a school administrative role. His passion, after all, is elementary-age children. But in over 28 years in Illinois schools — from classroom teacher to building principal and now administrator — people have encouraged him to stretch into new roles. “This is how I’ve been able to serve,” he says. “I see God’s hand in all that.”

In that second-grade Silvis classroom, when as a neophyte teacher Bill was trying to get a handle on classroom management, he posted this sign over the chalkboard: “I am. I can. I ought. I will.” [From For the Children’s Sake, by Susan Schaeffer Macauly] To Bill, that means every kid is valuable — a creation of God. Every child has abilities, alongside responsibility to make positive choices.

Even today, that motto influences his professional demeanor and his personal choices. Bill is a right-brain guy in a typically left-brain administrative world. He tends to get the big picture in an imaginative, connected way. With Bill’s influence, the district added a key phrase to its strategic plan: “All students can and will learn.” Those six words shifted the strategic focus from achievement scores to kids themselves.

“All this is meaningless without the belief that all kids can learn,” says Bill. “With a student focus, our decisions are made for kids who are valuable — not on what’s convenient or comfortable for adults.”

Bill describes his school district as “always very innovative, 60% low income, strong in its minority diversity, part of a community that is very neighborhood-based.” Declining enrollment has pressed administrators to make tough decisions.

But a recent Building Excellence plan has managed to consolidate and improve schools in a way that honors neighborhood pride. Innovative magnet schools will strengthen district curriculum in science, math, and the arts. Partnerships have been forged with three area universities.

It’s “win-win,” says Bill. Kids win. A community wins.

Bill may not give a “whole lot of thought each day” to how his faith impacts his routines. But his calling is surely rooted in that phrase: “Children are born persons.” He “tries to be careful not to judge others,” whether it’s the teachers who are now his students or kids themselves. “I may get frustrated with behavior but not the person.”

“I try to be as positive as I can.” A man of gentle, soft-spoken spirit, Bill says that “every few years I raise my voice for the impact in a situation. It’s about being respectful, behaving in a way that is consistent with the expectations I have for students.”
His calling is to build up the lives of those who are served by his actions.

Twenty-one years ago, Bill had a “squirming, energetic, brilliant kid” in his second-grade classroom. It was early in his teaching career, “before I had learned much about behavior management.” Two years ago, Bill heard that the boy-now-adult, Joshua, was incarcerated on gang-related murder and drug charges.

“It haunted me. I wondered how he could survive being locked up in a cell, knowing his energy level.” Bill found a greeting card and wrote a note that said something like, “Boy, if I knew then what I know now, things might have been different.”

On lined school paper, Joshua penciled a four-page reply. Student assured teacher that he took responsibility for his own bad choices. And thus began a correspondence of mutual respect that now fills two binders.

In his letters, Joshua — that second-grade kid who earned his GED behind bars — shares quotes from Greek philosophers and perspectives grounded in his Buddhist faith. The friendship has taken Bill inside prison walls for personal visits.

Bill treats Joshua as a person of value, created by a loving God. That is his calling.

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"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.