Since becoming a teacher at St. Columba School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, nearly four decades ago, Bill Johnson has been known for teaching students lasting values for life, and also for pitching in however he can to help the school continue its everyday operation.
“If something needs to be done, he’s there to do it,” said Christine Patton, the principal at St. Columba School. She noted for Johnson, that ranges from serving as the school’s vice principal and middle school religion and social studies teacher, to shoveling snow off the sidewalks in winter, to helping make needed repairs that crop up, to directing students on morning and afternoon safety patrols. “He’s the first one here in the morning to open the building up,” she added.
May 27 began as a typical morning for Johnson at St. Columba School.
“We were having trouble with the air-conditioning unit in prekindergarten and kindergarten,” he said. “I had been working before school to try to get it running.”
But when he walked outside the school’s main entrance, a surprise awaited him. Members of the St. Columba School community – from students, faculty and staff, along with some graduates – stood there with balloons, as representatives of the Archdiocese of Washington’s Catholic Schools Office were there to announce that Johnson was one of 10 Golden Apple Award winning teachers for 2021. Catholic school teachers in the archdiocese receiving that honor supported by the Donahue Family Foundation are recognized for their teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education and receive a certificate, a golden apple and a check for $5,000.
“I was delighted,” Johnson said. “It was humbling too, because the kids and parents have meant so much.” The veteran educator said he was especially moved that several St. Columba alumni now attending high school and college came back that morning to congratulate him. “It is one of the most rewarding feelings a teacher has. When they return as young adults, it really touches your heart.”
In an interview a week later, St. Columba’s principal praised her colleague, saying, “He’s one of a kind.” Johnson was recognized for “just being an exceptional teacher,” she said.
“He’s so faith-filled. He just sees the good in every student, he just sees the potential in every student. He never gives up on them,” Patton said. “Things he’s taught them in class stay with them their whole life.”
That morning, Johnson was in the school’s multipurpose room, joining students in folding up lunchroom tables in preparation for the next day’s graduation reception there, and he paused to reflect on his teaching career at St. Columba School that began in 1983.
“I always wanted to be a teacher,” he said.
The 1977 graduate of Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville said he was shaped by what the Holy Cross Brothers taught him there, “to see yourself as God sees you, with infinite love, (that) there’s goodness and kindness in every person… The Holy Cross brothers always saw the good in each person.”
After graduating from Salisbury State College, he worked for a year with McHale Landscape Design, a company run by two fellow McNamara graduates. After learning of a teaching opening at St. Columba School, he was hired there and hasn’t left.
“It just felt like home,” Johnson said, noting the support he received from the pastor, principal and fellow teachers. “I was the youngest teacher coming in, and they took me under their wings.”
This fall, he will begin his 39th year there.
“There’s a spirit in this community, a sense of kindness, of concern for one another, of faith and support from the children, parishioners and parents. It’s more than just a school, it’s a family,” he said.
Johnson, who has four adult children and is a longtime member of Most Holy Rosary Parish in Upper Marlboro, remembered a religion class taught at Bishop McNamara by Brother David Andrews, who also taught English there and later served as the school’s president. Students in that class discussed the Gospel of St. Matthew.
Reflecting on the Gospel and how it relates to your everyday life “gives you balance in life, that God is first in all things,” said the longtime religion teacher at St. Columba.
In a statement nominating Johnson for the Golden Apple Award, Father Gary Villanueva, the pastor of St. Columba, said, “He serves and supports the parish and school as a servant leader role model to our staff and students.”
The priest noted that Johnson shares his faith in various ways, helping prepare eighth graders for Confirmation, coordinating school Masses and involving students in preparing and participating in the liturgies, and as the driving force behind the school’s Stations of the Cross during Lent and its Living Rosary in October.
Johnson said he tries to give students “a confidence that the Spirit is always with them and will guide them and comfort them and lead them to goodness and happiness.” The teacher said he hopes St. Columba graduates leave the school knowing God loves them and is always with them, in good times and bad.
The veteran educator said the pandemic shutdown of Catholic school campuses that began in the spring of 2020 “caused me to develop new skills. Being an older teacher, not growing up with computers, it was a little intimidating.”
He said Patton, the school’s principal, had told the teachers to be ready to switch over to distance learning, and to have their students take all their needed materials home with them.
“We didn’t miss a day. We started distance learning that Monday,” Johnson said. “My colleagues taught me Google Classroom, how to use Zoom, how to get back in after I locked myself out (of the system).”
St. Columba School resumed with virtual classes this past fall, and in January, students gradually returned to in-person learning, with the option to remain at home taking online classes. By the end of the school year, about 70 percent of students were attending classes there.
Johnson said it was very moving to hear the sound of laughter in the hallways after the students returned. “The teachers and students had such a deep appreciation being together again,” he said.
Noting that the eighth graders’ graduation would be the next day, he said, “It will be a little tearful. (It’s) a wonderful class, an outstanding group of young people, grateful for what we did have” despite the challenges they faced over the past year.
A week earlier, Johnson – known as “Mr. J” to his students – had once again chaperoned the eighth graders on their traditional outing to Patuxent River Park in Upper Marlboro, where they hiked, did kayaking and had a cookout afterward.
Johnson said he still looks forward to coming to school every day, where his students, a variety of duties, and possible repairs await him.
“I feel blessed,” he said, adding, “It’s more than a job. It’s a vocation. You feel like you’re called to this.”
