New Southampton Administrator Draws on Childhood Journey To Welcome Multilingual Learners

When Jully Williams sat down in front of Colleen Henke’s third grade class last week, the students were not only interested in the book the administrator was about to read — “A Girl Named Rosita: The Story of Rita Moreno” by Anika Aldamuy Denise — but they also wanted to know exactly who she was.

For just over two months, Williams has served as the Southampton School District’s new director of multilingual and culturally responsive education, she explained to the students. And when she was done reading the story — which was about the Puerto Rican actor and dancer coming to the United States as a child — she turned the line of questioning toward them.

“What are the ways that we can make somebody like Rosita, who doesn’t know English, feel comfortable, feel welcome?” she recalled asking.

“You could play with them,” one student replied.

Another suggested, “You could show them what you want to do with them.”

“It just warmed my heart,” she said, “because I had told them, ‘I felt like Rosita. I didn’t speak English.’”

When Williams emigrated with her family from Ecuador, she was just 5 years old. They landed in Brentwood and, in 1985, it was a different time. Despite a burgeoning Latino population, her reception was not nearly as welcoming as she saw among Southampton students, she said.

“Back then, I feel it was a little more sink-or-swim situation,” she said. “I had no choice. I had to learn that language quick and fast.”

Going into kindergarten, Williams did not know any English, she said. Over the next two years, she was speaking, reading and writing a lot better.

“By the time I got to fourth grade, I really overcame all those hurdles of language barriers,” she said, “that fear of wanting to express myself, to speak up for myself.”

It was her teacher, Mr. Ferguson, who helped get her there, she said. He saw she was struggling and met her where she was — even going so far as to teach himself her version of long division, which she learned from her parents, so that he could better explain the standardized version, she said.

“I got the same answer as everybody else, but he was accepting of my difference, and that made me take risks a little bit more in his class,” she said. “That year was phenomenal. That was the first year I made Winners Circle, which back then was like making Honor Roll.”

Williams has carried his patience and empathy forward as she pursued her own path in education. After graduating from Patchogue-Medford High School, she earned her associate degree in liberal arts from Suffolk County Community College, a bachelor’s degree in social sciences and a master’s degree in TESOL — an acronym for “teaching English to speakers of other languages” — from Adelphi University, as well as an advanced graduate certificate in educational leadership from Stony Brook University.

She officially began her career as an English as a New Language, or ENL, teacher in the North Babylon School District. And there, she began meeting students who reminded her of herself. One, in particular, had just emigrated from Haiti, she recalled. He was fluent in Haitian Creole and French, she recalled, and was learning both English and Spanish.

“He was such an amazing student, just incredibly smart, incredibly talented,” Williams said. “He didn’t want to try out for the Junior Honor Society, and I told him, ‘If you don’t try out’ — and I swear, I acted like my parents and my old teachers — ‘I’m going to call your mom and tell her that you’re missing out on this opportunity.’”

Williams was the first person he showed his acceptance letter to when he got in.

“I’ve come across so many students like that,” she said. “I always tell them, ‘No matter how tough it gets, if you don’t like your setting now, change it — and this is how you’re going to change it. This is your exit.’”

Wanting to reach more parents and make even more of a difference, Williams transitioned away from the classroom and toward administration, working as an assistant principal at Huntington High School and the secondary dean for Western Suffolk BOCES in North Babylon before her most recent role as an assistant principal of Milton L. Olive Middle School in Wyandanch.

“Here in my position as a director, I’m living my dream, because I’m getting to talk to parents,” she said. “I’m explaining to parents the education, the curriculum. I’m explaining to parents about what their children are doing in the schools. And that’s made it rewarding, because that’s something I felt that my mom would have wished to have been able to participate in and see more. And even though they did have it, it’s nice to have authority and to be able to speak their language.”

Coming to Southampton with a deep understanding of the needs of multilingual learners — both socially and instructionally — Williams said she wants to make sure that teachers, staff and district administration are culturally responsive and self-aware, and that everyone feels welcomed.

Just like what she heard in that third grade classroom, she said.

“When you make someone feel welcome, they express themselves and they share their ideas,” she said. “To hear these little third-graders share their ideas, to me; it was just so heartwarming. That’s our future. That’s what makes this all worthwhile.”