Author of “Quiet Courage in the Classroom”, Founder and President of the Freedom To Think Project

William Loggans is a Florida high school history and law teacher—and former law enforcement officer—who unexpectedly found himself at the center of a national conversation after a classroom poster sparked debate around fairness, free thought, and student rights. What began as a local classroom moment quickly escalated, placing William under scrutiny he never sought.

As the new year begins, William is sharing what he learned from that experience through his new book, Quiet Courage in the Classroom. Rather than revisiting controversy, the book focuses on what educators, parents, and students can take forward into a new semester—and a new year.

Website - https://freedomtothinkproject.com

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you Bill.

Thank you Ingle.

Now what part of the world are you in right now?

I'm in Florida, Orlando, Florida.

How long have you been teaching?

I've been teaching a little over 12 years.

I'm a former investigator for the Department of Children and Families, and I got into teaching as a way of trying to get to kids before they get into a situation where the Department of Children and Families has to come investigate their home.

Because I saw a lot that just broke my heart, and I felt God calling me to get into this profession, so I could be up front, sort of a barrier to get into situations that are bad for them.

How did you come to meet Jesus?

I grew up in a Christian home.

I didn't really deny God ever.

I wasn't a firm believer, and now I realize that actually is denying God if you're not a firm believer.

In my adult life, I started having a lot of troubles.

Someone mentioned to me one day that, you know, go to church, see what the pastor has to say about God's Word.

It will be uplifting, and I didn't realize how uplifting it would be.

But once I started going, I started realizing that I was lost, and I needed Jesus in my life.

At that point in time in my life, I accepted Christ as my Savior, and I just moved on from there and got more involved in having faith and being able to carry on my life with Jesus instead of without Him, and it's been so much better.

How much of being a teacher requires you to be teachable?

I feel like a teacher, if you're going to teach in public schools and you have faith like I do, you have to keep in mind that you're dealing with basically a clean slate or a slate that's been kind of corrupted.

So I look at it that way, and I think I can lead by example.

I can show my students what it's like to have faith without preaching to them or without doing anything against the law in public schools.

Of course, you can't talk about a teacher can't teach the Bible or anything, but I teach it in a roundabout way that I think a lot of kids catch on.

And from what I'm seeing, I feel like I have a lot of confidence in this next generation coming up.

I think these kids that are coming out now, going into college, are able to think more for themselves.

I'm just amazed by the feeling I felt hearing you say, I believe there's a lot of hope.

There are good things that can come from this generation.

Is that something cultivating the positive mindset in the midst of things that look and can be said to be negative?

Absolutely.

I probably had a kind of a different outlook before, but I had a tragedy in my life.

About five years ago, I lost my oldest daughter and I started seeing things a lot differently because she was going through a lot of problems that I had no idea about.

And she was grown.

She was 36 years old, just recently had a baby.

From that day, I started looking at these kids coming in my classroom and thinking, you know, each one of these kids is a soul.

Each one of them has their own demons they're dealing with.

Each one of them has their own problems at home or problems in school.

And I started looking at kids more like more compassion and more understanding and encouraged me to be more of a part of their lives, to try to mold them into having better lives and doing that with faith.

If you had to compare your life to a Bible character, who do you think would be a fit?

I couldn't compare myself to him because I had so much courage, I think a lot more than I did.

But Paul was facing a lot more, of course, than what I was facing.

I was facing maybe losing my job for standing up for our students' rights.

But Paul, he could have saved his own life.

All he had to do was just say, you know, I lied.

None of this was true that I said.

And they would have let him go free.

But he didn't do that.

He knew that Jesus calls on us to have courage in situations and stand up and not just go along with the crowd and make it easier on our lives, you know, because our lives are not easy.

They're never going to be easy.

We can have fulfillment in our lives by letting Jesus in and by modeling our faith to others.

And like I said, Paul, like I said, I have no way comparing myself to the things he did.

But I think about him a lot when I think about challenges and when I think about how easy it is to just, you know, go along with it and just move along.

But I think about Paul and I think about faith and that Jesus wants me to do whatever I can to help these kids.

What's on the horizon?

When I was going through this battle with the school district, I was being contacted from all over the country, from teachers, from parents, parents saying things like, I wish that you were my kid's teacher, from teachers who were saying, I wish I had your courage.

It got to me.

And I thought, you know, why can't they have courage?

And so I started this foundation, Freedom to Think Project, to help students, to help parents, to help teachers learn that they can have courage and support them in any way we can.

We have workshops to let them know what, you know, they can do without doing anything illegal.

You know, everything's by the book, by the law, but there's a lot of things that they don't realize that they can do to help their kids.

So we try to do that.

And we also, a big thing is the scholarships.

I've started a scholarship program that I'm getting corporate sponsors for, and I want to have them on a regular basis.

And what it is, is an essay about the First Amendment.

So a student, 11th grader, 12th grader, can write an essay about what is important to them.

What's the most important part of the First Amendment to them and why?

And we take the best ones and we give them a scholarship.

Right now, we have a $5,000 scholarship that we'll be giving away at the end of July.

And I'm looking for more corporate sponsors, maybe attorneys or faith-based organizations that can help us out with that.

But we've gotten a whole lot of response for that.

William, this has been a great pleasure.

Of course, amazing audience.

Links are in the show notes.

So if you want to connect to help on either or you can simply click there and connect with William.

Hey, if you had to leave a message for someone that's listening, that's in a similar situation, a teacher that's in a classroom, what would you say to them?

I would say it's too important for them to ignore it.

That this generation coming up is our chance, our chance to turn things around.

Again, William, a pleasure, a treasure.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired by 12 Minutes.