For Your School
MAPS is all about bringing poets and musicians together from different backgrounds and life experiences to accomplish writing and performing complete songs. Your school can have a MAPS program that accomplishes both individual learning in poetry and songwriting and also brings both the students and disciplines together in preparation for and...
In the Press
Music, poetry bond students The Republican Wednesday, June 01, 2011 By PAT CAHILL pcahill@repub.com SOUTH HADLEY – One group attends a middle school in the lush hills of South Hadley, the other a Harlem school with bars on the windows and security guards in the halls. Once a year for the past six years, the Pioneer Valley Performing...
What We Do
The program is structured to teach a combination of skills to the students and further their knowledge and understanding of the following: learn to write in-depth, quality, emotionally powerful poetry and music with not only well conceived structure, but also creative poetic and musical expression access their emotional selves in order to...
About
Music and Poetry Synchronized (MAPS) teaches 4th through 12th grade students from different geographic, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds to write poetry and music and prepare and perform the finished songs in a public concert at the end of the program term. Each MAPS class runs for sixteen weeks with a group of students creating poetry from their life stories and another group utilizing these poems as lyrics while creating the music and songs for a completed, cooperative effort. MAPS is in its sixth year of operation and has continued to evolve to include after school programs and community arts schools. The two primary teachers, Daniel Roberts (poetry/NY) and Tom Willits (music/MA), who created the program continue to teach at the two original MAPS program schools in Harlem, NYC and South Hadley, MA.
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