Community Arts Partner

Teaching Approach

Teaching Philosophy + Approach

Student-Centered Pongo encourages students to write about what’s on their minds and hearts. Mentors act as guides, providing creative prompts and templates, but always following youth choice. Differentiated Poets at all levels can engage in our unique process, and we offer support based on their respective needs. Students engage many writing techniques with Pongo, including: Dictation, Fill-in-the-blank, and Independent Writing. Constructivist In the Pongo process, Mentor and Poet create synergistically. Mentors offers ideas based on their experience, knowledge, and active listening; the poet decisively and actively shapes the poem’s final form. Project-based Every Pongo workshop’s objective is for students to produce 1-2 poems they are proud of. Poems by nationally recognized poets are used as model texts and to prime their creativity. For longer residencies, Pongo can facilitate the creation of Zines, engaging students’ editorial skills. Collaborative Pongo prompts students to create group guidelines and encourage peers. Group writing invites students to volunteer responses, building on each other to create poems. We work collaboratively with partners to develop shared goals for poetry mentorship and professional development opportunities, ensuring they meet specific school needs. Trauma-informed Approach Pongo’s method has been honed by prominent academics, clinicians, and educators, and our approach with youth is informed by the knowledge of how personal and racial trauma affects survivors. Our training program provides educators with the knowledge and skills to incorporate our trauma-informed teaching techniques into their programming. Trainings are led by our Program Manager Shaun McMichael, MAT, with the support of an experienced Pongo writing mentor and/or licensed clinician.

Curriculum Integration Possibilities

As Pongo values honesty, personal stories and feelings are encouraged, but youth ultimately can compose poetry led by their interests. However, Pongo is prepared to work with any prospective school partner to deliver poetry mentorship programming that meets the curriculum needs and desired learning outcomes of your specific site. Specifically, we are committed to designing poetry mentorship lesson plans within the framework of Grades 9-12 ELP standards in Language Arts classes.

Special Skills and Areas of Expertise

Pongo has significant expertise and success in collaborating with a variety of institutional partners. Locally, we maintain partnerships with complex institutions in order to implement our poetry mentorship programs, including relationships with the Children and Family Justice Center (formerly King County Juvenile Detention Center) and the Child Study & Treatment Center. As part of these partnerships, Pongo collaborates with the relevant school districts and library staff at each of these sites. Pongo’s poetry mentorship and professional development programs have demonstrated that our model is effective across divergent populations and contexts. Pongo has worked with a diverse array of organizations, including youth in foster care facilities, LGBTQ resource centers, and homeless shelters across the duration of our 25-year history. In partnership with the Gates Foundation, Pongo provided training and support for therapeutic poetry programs serving homeless youth in four school districts across Washington State. Pongo has also served incarcerated, homeless, and other distressed adult populations in partnership with the Downtown Emergency Service Center. In 2018, Pongo was invited by researchers at the Harborview Medical Center to provide poetry programs to adults with lived experiences of homelessness and alcoholism. To find sample agendas of professional development trainings Pongo provides for educators on our trauma-informed approach follow these links:

• Pongo Professional Development Training Agenda (Full Day Version)
• Pongo Professional Development Training Agenda (2 Half Days Version)

Testimonials from Schools

“Pongo has helped our youth to share, with a listening community, their understandings, their pains, their stories and their own splendid yearnings.  The Pongo mentors have also helped train recreation therapists, counselors, psychologists and physicians to incorporate their narrative methods into a breadth of healing strategies with youth. The writings of youth, from Pongo poetry sessions, form some of my most treasured vignettes to help illustrate possibilities for young people striving to grow beyond their isolation and pain into more fulfilling and optimistic lives. I know firsthand of the utter earnestness, frugality, and selfless mission-driven spirit of the Pongo team.” —Michael G. Storck, MD, Attending Psychiatrist at the Child Study & Treament Center, Middle School Unit