This is a poem of, by and for Williston

Editor’s note: The following poem was read during Upper School Assembly on Wednesday, February 20.

To a few factory buildings now used to mold minds
To these teachers who give it their all every time
To students who strive as no others have striven
Allow me to speak of your gift that keeps giving.
Unique stands our passion, diverse our pure purpose
Collected comprising a community of courage.

Hot air blowing through white curtains on a summer morning,
I sleep and eat and play games, ignoring mom’s warnings,
that I should instead do some chores;
but it’s real nice to take a break every once in a while,
and get ready for the upcoming trial.

From cool autumn mornings to dark winter nights
Tirelessly working to achieve new heights.
Though it’s not always simple each attempt keeps us reaching,
Stretching and hoping,
To find a new answer, a reason, a meaning

As the final days of the school year approach
We will all buy our dresses and ties
splashing in muddy puddles where snow used to be
Reminds us that we are just past childhood
But the books we read
The opinions we form
And the world that awaits
All promise a bright future.

By Evan Jacobson, Jiwon Lee, Mika Chmielewski, and Laura McCullagh

Trickle Up: International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2013

Editor’s Note: English teacher Ryan Tyree presented the following during the All-School Assembly on Wednesday, February 6.

Never again.

For Holocaust educators, this is the rallying cry, the promise we remember each day, to stay alert and guard against the threat – that history will repeat itself. On Jan. 27, 1945 Allied troops liberated the largest Nazi Labor and Death Camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. For the last several years, that date has been set aside to reflect upon and remember the events known to us as the holocaust.

The holocaust was an event of global proportions, involving perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and rescuers. The most-commonly accepted time frame spans from 1933 to 1945.

You’ve heard of the trickle-down concept? The Holocaust was carried out from the highest levels of authority down. It was the organized, state-sponsored, bureaucratic, legal persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and other targeted groups by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. What was wrong with these targeted groups? Why mistrust them, why shun them, why hate them? At the most basic level, they were outsiders. Supposedly different. Other.

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