Coral Gables Senior High School language arts teacher Mia Eljaiek released her debut poetry collection on Sept. 8.

The book, "Spinning Yarn," mixes rhyming verse, limericks and two-line couplets built around family, motherhood, heartbreak and the students who pushed Eljaiek to finally put the manuscript together. Indie Earth Publishing released the paperback, available for $16.99, according to a Strand Books listing.

Poems capture family and heartbreak

Eljaiek described the collection as a "time capsule" of her life, with each poem tied to a specific memory or lesson, according to a profile in CavsConnect, the school's student newspaper. One of her favorites, "Only a Mother Could Know," reflects on the sacrifices of raising children.

"I have always had the kind of mindset that the words just appear in my mind and I put it down on the paper," Eljaiek said in the CavsConnect profile. "Writing poems for me is like encapsulating any kind of moment ... from happy to sad."

Decades teaching in Miami-Dade classrooms

Eljaiek has taught in Miami-Dade County Public Schools for decades, spending 11 years in special education at Kenwood K-8 Center and 14 years teaching language arts at West Miami Middle School before joining Coral Gables Senior High six years ago. She holds a master's degree from the University of Miami.

She told CavsConnect that watching her high school students' untapped potential finally pushed her to stop delaying her own publishing goal. She signed with an independent publisher and now owns two proof copies of the finished book.

Her first grandson is due in January, and Eljaiek said publishing the collection was partly a way to preserve her reflections for another generation.

More books already in the works

She is already working on two children's book manuscripts that await an illustrator and a fiction novel drawn from her own upbringing. She plans to hold book talks and signings, though no dates or venues have been announced.

"Spinning Yarn" is available online through Strand Books and Amazon.