Steven Layne, an Oak Brook junior high school teacher and NIU alumnus, was one of two recipients of the prestigious $25,000 Milken Family Foundation Educator Award for excellence in teaching.

The award provides elementary and secondary school teachers, principals and other educators with the funding and recognition that the foundation believes they deserve. The program’s goals are to attract motivated people into the challenging world of teaching.

Layne has been a teacher at Butler School District No. 53 in Oak Brook since 1989, but he did not always have the ambition to be a teacher. He began his career as a counselor, but soon decided that teaching was his calling. In addition to teaching at Butler, Layne teaches an off-campus methods course at NIU as well as a class in children’s literature at Wheaton College. Over the years, Layne has taught over 11 different courses for NIU both on and off campus.

“My wife was a teacher, and hearing about the things she did sounded very appealing and interesting,” Layne said.

Earlier this year, Layne learned he was one of two Illinois educators to receive the Milken Award.

“The foundation is very secretive with the way they handle things, and there is no way to nominate for the award,” Layne said.

The school boards work with the foundation to decide which educators are considered for the award. Due to the monetary status of the award, there is no way to nominate anyone and the search is extremely extensive.

“They got my name from a letter and three of my colleagues were called and interviewed,” Layne said.

The colleagues were not allowed to tell Layne they talked to anyone and at the time, were not even informed of who they were talking to.

When Layne learned that he had received the award, he saw it as a blessing. Layne told the Chicago Tribune that he and his wife plan to travel to Russia to adopt a sibling for the baby they adopted in Russia last year.

“I can’t think of a better way to spend the money,” Layne said. “The award is a great gift for anyone involved in education.”

“Thomas’s Sheep and the Great Geography Test,” Layne’s first book published in 1998, was written as part of his doctoral candidacy at NIU. Layne’s new book, “This Side of Paradise,” was published in Nov. 2001and is a teen suspense thriller that combined both humor and romance to appeal to more readers.

Layne also was the winner of the 1995 Alpha Delta Literacy Award, which is given to an elementary teacher for recognized scholarship, leadership and service in the field of reading. In 1997, Layne was awarded the Outstanding Researcher Award by NIU’s College of Education Alumni Council and in 1999 named Teacher of the Year at the junior-high level by the Illinois Reading Council. He also was named to the 2001 All-Teacher Team by USA Today newspaper and chosen as the Edwin A. Hoey Award winner for U.S. Outstanding Teacher at the junior-high level by NTCE in 2001.