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Week 0. Observation (January 11, 2007)

I arrived at CCHS an hour before the class started to discuss the lesson plan with Ms.Hatanaka and to go over paper works that I had to submit to school officials. I revised my lesson plan to gear toward cognitive mapping the Culver City instead of limiting the playground to the school although it would be interesting to do some projects on site. We, Ms.Hatanaka and I, went over the lesson plans for week1, 2, and 3 together. After that she told me about a student who had autism, but assured me that generally he is a very good student and has no problem doing the assigned work in class.

Since they had been working on designing a shelter in groups, she had the students to prepare a group presentation. It was great to see their perception of architecture. Some people already had some languages related to architecture, which surprised me. Another good aspect of the group presentation was that it was helpful for me to learn their names, how each person participated in group work, and how they felt about the group work process itself.

Week1. Introduction (January 18, 2007)

Again I arrived at school an hour prior to class time, just in case of any technological difficulties that may come up. When I got there at 11:30(class begins a little bit after 12:30), Ms.Hatanaka did have the projector ready, but the computer wasn't. She had expected me to bring in a laptop, but I thought I'd use the school computer. Luckily we got in touch with the film teacher and he had a computer on a cart, let us use it for the fifth period. We were all set about ten minutes before class started.

Students were great. I think I spent a little too long on self-introduction, because it had some Korean traditional architecture, Korean contemporary architecture, and my past works. We had a few minutes to answer questions, and I think that took away the time we could have used for cognitive map drawing time and discussion time. It will be better next class since the concept of cognitive mapping was introduced, and my self introduction is a one-time thing.

I collected students' works after class, and there were difference between middle school students and high school students. High school students were far more sophisticated and/or detailed at their work. I wish they had more time to work on it, and I'm starting to expect good work from them.

Week2. Cognitive Mapping Culver City (January 31, 2007)

There were some new students as the new semester began. I couldn’t see the student who had autism. Ms.Hatanaka later told me he dropped out. There were two new students, one girl and one boy. It was difficult to talk the girl into participating in class. She was expressing herself, which I thought she could become actually good, but didn’t feel too great to see someone not doing what they were required to do to learn in that session.

I gave a quick PowerPoint lecture on cognitive mapping since it has been two weeks and new students were in class. Then I asked them what they thought about Culver City, what makes it special or not special, why they like the city and why not. When I started writing their responses on the board, they suddenly got excited and began to participate. For creative expression part, I asked them to pick one or two themes from the theme list and cognitively map their favorite place or least favorite place in Culver City. Next week’s assignment for them was to form a group of four to five people, pick one theme per person, pick a district, observe their district, and draw a cognitive map of the theme they each decided to work on.

Week3. Cognitive Mapping Culver City (February 7, 2007)

There was a misunderstanding between Ms.Hatanaka and I. She thought I would be coming in on Thursday when I put Wednesday in the revised schedule. However, we had a good time going over difficulties the students were having and looked at their work that had been in progress. Ms.Hatanaka was apologized me for having to come out and take off without teaching, but for me it was a helpful working session with her.

Week3. Cognitive Mapping Culver City (February 8, 2007)

I began by explaining Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City and Peter Zumthor’s Atmosphere. Sometimes I feel like the structure gets stretched out to weeks’ work/learning. Some things are better to be mentioned before they work on something and vice versa. Today, we got into groups and had desk critique. It was surprising when I had a few minutes left after I met with all six groups, about five to six minutes per group. They seemed to be getting better understanding of cognitive maps. I asked them what each of them worked on, had them explain what they drew, and gave them directions for next week. It is becoming somewhat like a studio, because thanks to Ms.Hatanaka, she is letting them work on them in her classes so that they don’t forget it too quick.