News and Features

Locust Grove Middle School Poetry Awards

Eleven seventh graders from the Locust Grove Campus of Lancaster Mennonite School will have poems published in the Creative Communication poetry anthology, A Celebration of Poetry. They are (in photo, left to right): Rebecca Lauver, Faith Dinger, Roman Thomas, Cody Kauffman, Alex Malave, Rachel Steckbeck, Julian Brubaker, Emily Peifer, Vanessa Charles, Ali Sauder and Madeline Mast. 

Because of the large number of awards, Locust Grove also will be recognized in the anthology as having received a "Poetic Achievement Award”—an honor given to the top 10% of the schools who entered the contest. The schools are chosen for this award based on the number and quality of the entries accepted. 

The poems were written in Curry Snell’s 7th grade language arts class.

Organizers of the competition said this about the large number of awards received at Locust Grove:

The fact that you have numerous students accepted makes a strong statement about your school. Less than 50% of the poems submitted are selected to be published. The list of your students that have been accepted to be published represents a lot of talent, hard work, and dedication from your teachers and students. In judging thousands of poems, our judges have found that the single most important factor in creating a quality poem is the quality of the instruction. We have found that schools with excellent language arts programs have a much higher percentage of their students' writing accepted. With excellent teachers, come excellent writers.