Six years ago, Tim McLaughlin moved to Santa Fe to teach at the Santa Fe Indian School and inherited a poetry-slam group.

The spoken-word movement in the country was growing, giving urban poets a way to express their frustration with everyday life and the system. Rap mogul Russell Simmon launched Def Poetry Jam on HBO a year earlier, marking the movement's rising popularity.

But would a form most recognized for a super-aggressive approach to poetry — a lot of slam poets are loud, many angst-ridden and some are downright crude — work with kids who grew up in Native cultures often thought of as quiet and in some ways mysterious?

Well, it did. And it didn't.

Where urban poets hit the stage and blow you away with their volume and ferocity, McLaughlin's poets ebbed and flowed, starting at a whisper and growing to a thunderous boom and fading back again.

Where traditional slam poets were waxing political, McLaughlin's poets told the stories of their ancestors and ceremonies.

Where urban rhymers spoke of alienation and isolation, McLaughlin's kids spoke of the unifying forces in their traditional and cultural worlds.

No — in a lot of ways the Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Club is nothing like the groups people think about when they hear the term "poetry slam." But in all those ways, the group has set itself apart, garnering attention along the way, and becoming a source of pride and admiration.

It is for that reason that the group's faculty adviser and its student members were chosen for this year's 10 Who Made a Difference recognition.

"Our group is a positive, strong, creative force in our community," McLaughlin said recently. "We create just a lot of positive energy."

Through their stories and poems, team members have also offered an insight into cultures with which most non-Native people are unfamiliar.

"In some ways, (McLaughlin) has reconnected (members) with a tradition that is ancestral, historical," said Santa Fe's Poet Laureate Valerie Martinez. "They seem to me to be reconnecting the rest of us to that tradition."

Martinez, who said slam poets are often derided for a lack of depth in their writing, described the group as "heads and shoulders above" many of their contemporaries.

"The content of their work just has incredible depth," she said. "They write about everything, families, cultures, experiences in the world."

The group has also proved an inspiration to other teens who've seen them perform.

"Each time our students are immediately struck," said Judy Goldberg, who works with teens with her Youth Radio Project. The Spoken Word Club has been featured twice on the show. "The kids are in awe by the depth of creativity, by the connection to tradition, to family and heritage," Goldberg said.

It was that sense of admiration that attracted Fantasia Lonjose to the group when she was a freshman at SFIS. She was shy when she started, but hearing other students' stories encouraged her to share her own. "When I first saw what reading poetry was, I really got into it," she said. "I just got inspired by other people, other students."

Lonjose, who graduated in 2007, said that eventually she felt like a role model to younger students.

While it's obviously the kids' experiences that make their writing and performances unique, both Goldberg and Martinez credit McLaughlin with prompting his students to dig deep into their lives for inspiration.

"He has a remarkable ability to ask a lot of the students, and the students rally," Goldberg said.

Martinez said she thinks it's McLaughlin's literary background — he has bachelor's degrees in English and French from the University of Virginia and a master of arts degree from the University of Montana — that helps the group to balance the performance aspect of slam with the written part.

Since 2002, participation in the club has grown, and so has its popularity.

In the last six months alone, the group was written about in The New York Times, competed in Brave New Voices 2008: The 11th Annual International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, was filmed as part of an HBO documentary on Brave New Voices and was featured on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

McLaughlin and two team members spent last week in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania as part of a sort of cultural exchange that resulted from a performance it did while in Washington, D.C., for Brave New Voices.

Because of all of its exposure, the team and its members have become ambassadors for the school, their individual tribes and the Santa Fe community.

"It's always refreshing to hear young people speak up. It makes you learn about your own community," Martinez said. "So they've become sort of spokespersons."

"They're making really important contributions to this community," Martinez added, "they're also just really enjoyable."

SFIS SPOKEN WORD TEAM 2008-2009

TIM MCLAUGHLIN, head coach · SALLY PHELPS, assistant coach · NOLAN ESKEETS, intern coach · DAVIN CORIZ, intern coach
SANTANA SHORTY, team captain, sophomore · HEILERY YUSELEW, team captain, junior · MASHEYTI ROMERO, junior · RED HORSE BLACK ELK JIM, junior
STUART CHAVEZ, junior · ERICA KALLESTEWA, junior · KLAIRE HUBBARD, junior · CLARA NATONABAH, sophomore · ARIEL ANTONE, sophomore
KAYLEEN LOVATO, sophomore · AUTUMN BILLIE, freshman · ATHENA MORNING STAR, freshman