Bolingbrook Student Among 'Most Talented Young Writers' in Nation

Submitted by Valley View School District 365U

Photo: Brooks Middle School Principal Dr. Keith Wood and language arts teacher Sally Green congratulate eighth-grader Brenden Wagner at Monday night’s School Board meeting after Wagner was named a National Gold Medal winner in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

A poem written by Brooks Middle School 8th grader Brenden Wagner has been selected as a National Gold Medal winner in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

“With your mentorship, your student demonstrated that he is among the most talented young artists and writers in the nation,” Virginia McEnerney, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, wrote to Sally Green, Wagner’s language arts teacher at Brooks.

As a national Gold medal winner, Wagner has been invited to attend an awards ceremony June 2 at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Wagner has already earned a Scholastic Gold Key for his poem “Clearly Defined,” a piece about rules and expectations of poetry and how they’ve changed over time. He wrote the poem “on the spot” after he lost one of the two other poems he had written for the contest.

Nearly 320,000 students in grades 7 through 12 submitted entries to the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards contest which is presented by the non-profit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. The group’s mission is to identify students with exceptional artistic and literary talent and present their remarkable work to the world.

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of our nation’s youth for more than 90 years, and provided opportunities to celebrate creative teens.