Bellport teacher shows students they can be changemakers

For the past several years, Bellport Middle School has held an event to celebrate Black History Month.

This year, the school, in the South Country Central School District, kicked it up a notch.

The Feb. 13 event showcased students’ talents in dance, poetry, music and theater, and it included skits written by event co-coordinator Sharaya Williams about the genesis of Black History Month. 

Anthony Aiello, the middle school acting principal, said the audience was enthusiastic: “They were really engaged.” 

History also plays a big role in Williams’ social studies classes.

One of her lessons centers on the role young people played in the lunch counter sit-ins in the South during the 1960s. The aim, she said, is to show today’s students that young people like themselves can create change.

Williams is in her third year teaching at Bellport Middle School. (She also teaches a class at Bellport High School.)

“She’s one of those people who want to make Bellport Middle School and South Country School District a better place,” Aiello said.

Williams, 36, lives in Bellport and is deeply invested in the community.

She graduated from Bellport High School and worked there as a paraprofessional while attending Stony Brook University to earn her bachelor’s degree in Africana studies. (She also holds a master’s degree from Stony Brook, in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.) Williams’ three children attend South Country district schools.

After Williams earned her bachelor’s degree, she said she taught for a year at Oceanside Middle School in Nassau County before moving to Bellport schools.

“My heart is in Bellport,” said Williams, who was in 10th grade when she and her family moved there from Hempstead.

It wasn’t an easy transition, she recalled, and it affected her school work.

Her Spanish teacher, Courtney Foehr, noticed and would check in with Williams after class. “She showed she was concerned about me, not just the work I could do in her classroom,” Williams said.

Williams strives to give the same attention to her students.

“I call all of my students, past and present, ‘my kids,’ ” she said. “And they all know they’re my kids.”

Foehr said Williams strives to create “an emotional safe space” and to be a voice for those who don’t always speak up.

Aajaylah Hill, 25, a youth and family engagement specialist with the S.T.R.O.N.G. Youth gun violence prevention program, organized the Black History Month assembly with Williams. Hill describes her as driven but also as someone who has a sense of humor and “the ability to empathize with people more than I’ve ever seen.” 

Williams said she wants to inspire Bellport students to dream big, just as she was encouraged to do. 

“I love my community,” she said. “And I know what we’re capable of when we come together.”

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