Words of Understanding and Hope

The angels gather around this world

They watch the darkness take over

Its shadows cover the sky

The angels bring light that carries hope

The darkness disappears

As the light surrounds the world

Williams credits Lois Lowry's novel "Number the Stars" as the starting point. Together with colleagues Rebecca Williams (no relation) and Ann Wolff, she used the tale of young Annemarie in Nazi-occupied Denmark, who rescues her Jewish friend Ellen from the death camps, to prompt reflection on courage and justice in the face of inhumanity.

Surprised at the depth of her class discussion, she consulted Principal Paul L. Vickers about pinning the themes to current events. He vigorously approved.

"There's nothing more important than to teach a child to discover empathy," he said.

Williams then asked her students, "Do you think this could happen today?" To their resounding "no" she responded with news clips about the situation in Darfur, where at least 450,000 people have died from violence or disease in a campaign of government-sponsored aggression since 2003 that the U.S. government has called genocide.

Williams decided that writing poetry on the themes would test her students' newfound skills in free verse and allow them to articulate complex ethical ideas.

"I was shocked, very shocked," Williams said. "I didn't expect the quality of the work, and I wanted to share it."