Learning Never Ends
For my graduate level education, people are often surprised to hear that my M. ARCH. is from the University of Oregon. It’s true — all of my family are in Virginia, but when we were newly married, my husband and I were looking for adventure. I looked to the west coast. U of O has a strong program in sustainable design, particularly in the studios (see my March blog post about the importance of the sun in site design). What really intrigued me, however, is the Certificate in Technical Teaching the program offers. I took a dozen extra credit hours with a focus on teaching. I learned about the VAK model (visual, auditory and kinesthetic) of learning (I’m a combination of all three, with a stronger lean towards auditory). I was a teaching assistant to a freshman studio class — constantly questioning the students to explore more through their designs. The culmination was a research paper for which I was awarded the King Student Medal in Architectural Research.
Where does this get me today?
I start by teaching my clients. I want to empower them through their understanding of the process of working with an architect, constructing a building, and understanding what a drawing communicates.
Teaching at Leesa Mayfield Architecture
I have been volunteering with various local schools from the pre-school to the high school level to talk about how to become an architect and about what I do day to day. I have had high school students in my office job-shadowing and I hired a high school student as an intern last summer to help me with my website update. I have even become a bit of an ambassador for Work-Based-Learning in local high schools as I didn’t have a program such as this when I was young. I went into architecture in school and as a career without understanding what to expect.
I am working with students this spring to pull together two of my primary volunteering passions — students in the architectural design class at Handley High School are designing a modular home for the Blue Ridge Habitat for Humanity. Working from parameters of program (room functions and sizes), construction (providing information about modular construction and assembly), and design (showing the students other houses in the neighborhood and talking about what materials or methods would be similar on our house design such as the look of the roof or the style of the windows), the students will develop and plan and street elevation for this new Habitat for Humanity home.
Where my teaching certificate is coming in the most useful is at Shenandoah University where I am a visiting lecturer for Dr. Geraldine Kiefer‘s Arts Appreciation Class. I spend a week with her classes — first in the lecture hall and then out on a campus tour highlighting the design of buildings around SU’s campus. Later in the semester, Dr. Kiefer works with the students to write a design-analysis paper.
A huge part of being a teacher is in continuing education to stay current on trends. As part of my license I am required to complete 12 continuing education hours a year. These credits are gained by sitting in classrooms learning about code updates, reading magazine articles about design trends or attending conferences to learn about whats new in the business of architecture. Later this week, I will be reading an American Institute of Architects (AIA) white paper about modular construction to aid the Habitat’s Handley-Build project.
As a newly appointed City of Winchester Planning Commissioner, or one of the advisers to the City Council on policy issues, I am learning so much about how cities in general and Winchester in particular work. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference about affordable housing to learn more about what I can do as an architect and a civic leader to assist in this problem.
I have a passion for what I do — I love being an architect and using my teaching skills to share with you and the community what I know.
