Piñon Hills Academy students included in American Library of Poetry collection

More than 10 students from Piñon Hills Academy in seventh through ninth grades have been selected to publish their work in the American Library of Poetry’s 2025 Student Poetry Collection," Tri-City Record reported, naming a local cadre of middle and early high school poets whose work will appear in a national student anthology.

English teacher Mary Brokop said more than 30 of her students submitted entries to the selection process and used styles such as acrostic, haiku and free form. Brokop, who has been teaching since 1988, framed the submissions as part of a classroom push to make reading and writing engaging. "They've got to learn how to read and write, and they’ve got to like it," she said, adding that she is "looking for growth. I'm looking for creativity."

Tri-City Record identified student examples that reached the judges or selectors: Bailey Garcia authored "Whispers On the Green," a poem about golf, while Hayden Colomb and Isabella Jones used poetry to explore religion. Brokop said Colomb told her his poetry includes dark themes, and she emphasized that "self‑expression is what students respond to most when studying poetry." Brokop also noted how freeing poetic form can be: "I do find that some of my students throughout the years really excel at poetry because they can break the grammar rules," and "They don't have to worry about punctuation, they don't have to worry about sentence structure, and they can just get their ideas down."

One report described the program as the "America Library of Poetry collection" and called it "a national compilation that recognizes student poets and showcases student work to a wider audience." That phrasing appears with a truncated follow-up in the report: "The recognition highlights classroom literacy efforts and the school’s emp", the fragment in the original text ends at "emp" and is incomplete. The discrepancy in naming between "America Library of Poetry" and the "American Library of Poetry’s 2025 Student Poetry Collection" appears in the available accounts.

Available reporting supplies several concrete facts and several open items: Tri-City Record gives the grade range and the claim that "more than 10" Piñon Hills students were selected and that "more than 30" students submitted from Brokop’s classes, but it does not provide an exact list of all selected students or a final head count beyond "more than 10." The collection is identified by Tri-City Record as the 2025 Student Poetry Collection, while page metadata on the Tri-City Record site shows a 2026 copyright.

The selection places Piñon Hills Academy students on a wider stage and highlights the classroom methods Brokop has used since 1988 to encourage experimentation with form and personal expression. If the published collection follows the descriptions in available accounts, selected seventh- through ninth-grade poets from Piñon Hills will see their work presented alongside peers in a national student anthology, a visible outcome Brokop tied directly to student creativity and growth.