Teaching 101: Lessons from Your Students

I have just finished reading five out of eight midterm exams, and I have to say I am blown away. They must have been the most interesting papers I have read in a long time. Every student (so far...my partner has the other half's papers) was given a week to think about the midterm questions. They have to come up with a Spatial Tale of Origin. The end result? Several wonderful and different takes on a very open-ended assignment. I am still in awe and my own words cannot possibly grasp how impressive these are. I think it is more appropriate that I let these papers speak for themselves.

The Earth is the precedent and the product, the before and after.

-Charlie

The Surveyor creates the plans but he does not make it. The building can not be seen but is known.

-Simge

Architecture is a lesson of life.

-Kristin

The materials, rowers and boat, posts and lintels, are assembled to create the ideal unit, optically refined, harmonious, and precise to the smallest detail: the Parthenon of team sports is complete.

-Sebastian

The sandbox is the construction site of the child’s imagination.

-Brian

More from my students:

I search for architecture that addresses the individual's search for the divine in the everyday...as bending the mind towards the eternal by their ancient agelessness.

-Maria

I am not ready to make any strong identifications because I am still an explorer, a lost lunatic, a nomadic bearer of experience and recollections, an aspiring surveyor. But I am none of those things. They are only aspects of me.

-Hong

As a photographer, [I understand] that space and structure function as a whole in architecture.

-Heather