By Dr. Anne Parker Tayler ’55

Dear Friends,

I am so grateful to be here participating with you in the Alumnae Convocation and the 50th Reunion of the class of 1955. It fills me with gratitude and joy.  Your smiles, including those of friends and my dear family motivate me to share with you a few memories and the work that has passionately occupied my professional life during the past 50 years since graduating from Wells.

This day is not only an honor for Cornelia Ransom and myself, but an honor for Wells as it  educated us and spawned personal and professional growth, making us worthy of this recognition. I am humbled and want to thank you all.  As the Reunion brochure stated, “it gives us a chance to come together and celebrate where our journey began—here beside beautiful Lake Cayuga.”

[Title Slide 1]

The theme for my response to this honor is also the theme of my life—to flow with the momentum of change over time, and the growing diversity in the world with work embracing that diversity, in my case----with CHILDREN!

[Slide 1 and 2 of SW]

Though I was an American Studies major at Wells, it wasn’t until I moved to Arizona and New Mexico that I realized that our history had its inception, not with the Pilgrims at Plymouth rock, or our Eurocentric heritage, but that life in America started 10,000 years ago in the Southwest, where I have lived for the last 40 years working for the National Institute for Education and the University of New Mexico College of Education and School of Architecture and Planning. Many architects, artists and educators have joined me in making substantial projects possible in New Mexico, in other parts of the United States as well as internationally.  Leadership capabilities I learned at Wells have been woven into a larger tapestry of professional teams whose goals, like mine, include the improvement of education and life for children through creative learning environments and design education.

[Slide of Mom and Dad John]

My father and mother were both educators and prized the thinking process. And they helped me pick Wells to continue thinking and be educated in the liberal arts.

[Slide of Pittsford home]

My brother John and I participated in the metamorphosis of the land and home in which we grew up.  We saw it turn from a neglected property into a beautiful environment with its duck pond, ice skating rink, organic vegetable and flower gardens that the family lovingly tended even before organic gardening was popular.

These early experiences in Pittsford, New York and later on at the Wells campus spawned in me a love of beautiful environments aesthetic and open spaces, priceless in a crowded world that is often neglected and ugly.

[Slides of Wells]

The years at Wells afforded all of us a chance to do serious study, to pursue knowledge and truth, and to grow in body, mind, and spirit. 

We were enthusiastic, scholarly, productive, intellectual, self-directed, confident and challenged to be creative in our liberal arts studies.  In retrospect, most of us were happy women but probably a bit naïve.  In the fifties, however, a majority of Wells women got married and had children.   We resembled our parents’ generation in many ways.    Today, it seems that the next generations are very different and labeled as ‘Generations X, Y, or Z.’ 

On a personal note, Judy McGee’s father, in 1955, Vice-President of Eastman Kodak in Rochester, had arranged for Jody Taylor Linton and myself to go to Paris for 6 months and to London for 6 months to work for Eastman Kodak,  We were so excited and filed with anticipation.  Instead, guess what?  As typical of this time, we got married, had children and canned the trip.  This, I am sure, would never happen today.

[Slides of Wells]

Another episode bespeaks the times for Wells women in the ‘50’s.   Dr. MacMillian, our biology teacher, had prepared us for a final exam.  A classmate and I spent most of the night before the exam preparing for the test.  Exhausted in the morning, we ate breakfast and headed to the old gym to take the exam.  Upon finishing the test we all compared notes, and the tired classmate that had stayed up all night with me was shocked to find out that the section drawing of the male sex organ we were supposed to label, had been labeled by her as the drawing of the INNER EAR!  I have never forgotten the look on her face! Again, this might not happen today. 

And, are the Wells women still heading to the boathouse in the spring to get a tan with cookie sheets and aluminum foil used to reflect the sun to get an advanced suntan?  We didn’t even think about skin cancer in those days. 

And how many of you remember my skinny toothpick legs and asking me to hold your club sandwiches together or place olives in your martinis when we went to the Inn?

[Slides – Wedding and Children]

After being married and bearing three children, maybe one of the most creative contributions, we lived in Ithaca where my husband Bill Taylor attended Cornell Law School.  After enduring the gray days of Ithaca for three years we decided to move to Phoenix Arizona.  In those early years of marriage, I felt very “hemmed in” by motherhood, which my father claimed was “a most noble of professions.”  I recall a Wells commencement speaker who challenged graduates of Wells to treasure their intellectual curiosity and to read at least something mentally challenging for 15 minutes a day in between changing diapers! 

[Slide of G. Vlastos]

In combining architecture with education into a new discipline, I worked with architect George Vlastos from Casper, Wyoming and Crete, Greece - as well as others - to literally design and build learning landscapes (playgrounds) classrooms, museums and libraries as experiments for futuristic design thinking. I pumped concrete from huge trucks through hoses wrapped over my shoulder and helped to haul thousands of adobe blocks.

My experiences which links education and architecture are vast, but I know the work is not over.  In fact in 2006, the University of New Mexico Press will release a book I am writing about learning environment design.  It is tentatively titled “The Knowing Eye: Linking Architecture and Education through Learning Environment Design.”

[Slide of Man Apart of Vs. Apart From]

A Native American philosophical framework has influenced our work where man-woman-child is a part OF the environment, NOT apart from it…where we are stewards of the environment and the environment sustains us as part of this planet. 

[Slides of ASU]

At Arizona State University I began to work toward a Master’s and later a Ph.D. degree in Arts Education    At that time (1966) there was only one woman in the School of Architecture.  The idea for the dissertation project was given to me by children - my own and others. 

While shelling along a beach in Mexico with these children - 12 in all - I noticed that these young scavengers were picking up sea shells, saving some and discarding others.  I realized that these young minds were making critical aesthetic judgments about beauty in nature.  I asked them “why are you doing this?”  And they said, “because they are beautiful and different.”   Since I was, at the time, supervising student teachers from the cotton fields of Gilbert and the more metropolitan area of Glendale, I was aware of the sterile classroom environments in which children sit for 18 years or more. These children gave me the topic for my dissertation (and my life work) to design and research the effects of selected stimuli on the learning and behavior of four-year-olds basing my work on Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori.    Indeed we found through an experimental study that four-year-old students showed increases in concept formation and language development, creative self-expression and moved from parallel play to integrated play very quickly.  Since then, the design work has progressed from a modest beginning to 40 years of architectural and educational programming with architects who seek to design something more contemporary for children on a global scale.  The key of my contribution to
 the field of school design has been to use as design criteria: 

1  The developmental needs (rights) of children
2  The subject matter discipline concepts 
3  Multiple intelligences 
4  Culture 

…all as design determinants for school facility planning. 

With these criteria (instead of square footage and bottom line budgets), George and I began to develop a way to use architecture and the built environment as a teaching tool.  We began to realize that windows, walls, doors, roofs, and even drain pipes, solar design, water harvesting, wetlands, gardens, tree farms, and nature itself can become architectural tools for teaching and learning physics, geometry, history, science and ecology with such tools acting as a “three dimensional textbook.”   When we learn to “read” the environment, we will be more aware and open our eyes and minds with wisdom to help future generations understand the order in the universe and develop a symbiotic relationship with it and with each other.

[Slide Monte Vista]

In Albuquerque I had to persuade the Fire Marshall that a child-scaled two level learning environment was not a fire hazard, but rather a developmental learning tool for young children to master gross motor and other skills.

There is now enough research to posit that the quality of the physical environment does affect behavior and learning in children, or even in adults.  I am well aware of the prevailing sentiment that a great teacher can teach anywhere, that all a good teacher needs is knowledge, enthusiasm and a stick in the sand.  Yes, teachers are crucial to learning, but other variables - especially the physical environment - affect learning.  Both teachers and students benefit from carefully planned, flexible and beautiful learning spaces. 

[Slide of Head Start]

A grant from Head Start allowed us to explore new ways to provision early childhood classrooms with deployable cooking environments, building systems, multi-media, sand water play, design centers with light tables, and mini-museums for cultural realia. 

[Slide of Alaska Museum show]

In Anchorage Alaska, we created a museum exhibition for children on architecture and design.  It attracted 200,000 people who came to learn how architecture can be used as a teaching-learning tool. 

[Slide – BECC]

In Santa Fe we built a plaza of cultural significance in an early childhood center for bilingual children.

[Slide of traditional and futuristic learning environment]

This is a plan view contrasting what a classroom should be for project-based education, rather than the traditional, regimented classroom. 

[Slide – Use of Outdoors]

The outside of schools is a potent learning environment, too.

[Slide of SFIS]

Again in Santa Fe, after years of neglect, the Santa Fe Indian School has a series of new buildings of vernacular and regional style. Some Native American students, with the help of my architecture students, designed models of their dormitory spaces.  “The Heart Room” was one of their requests…a meditation room much like the Kiva where they could have privacy and talk to friends or just sit quietly in a spiritual sense…. unheard of in a public school.

[Slide - Stockton]

In Stockton, California, students told us they did not want another high school.  They already had one.  “Well, well”, we asked, “what do you want?”  Their reply was that they wanted a farm and an environmental study center on the San Joaquin Delta, not just another ordinary high school. They said,  “Make our education REAL!”

[Slide of Japan]

In Japan, students are making their education real by helping their constituency do city planning 

[Slide - Japan award]

I was honored there by the Architect’s Institute of Japan with a cultural appreciation award for bringing the architecture and design education program and its creative problem solving process to their country where  it is now proliferating very successfully.

[Slides of Africa]

And more reality-!  A doctoral student from the University of Einhoven, Holland, whom I advised, is working with UNESCO in Africa to help communities build their own schools.

[Slides - RFK 1, 2, 3]

In Albuquerque, Matt Pacheco, a former architecture student, worked with at-risk high school students to remodel an old dilapidated post office into their own school.

In the 70’s we sat on the floor and convinced social activist gang members to help us build playgrounds in the barrios instead of throwing stink bombs into our offices. 

[Slides of Graphics]

Paint is an inexpensive architectural membrane that can enliven learning environments, and can also reflect diverse cultural values. I encountered this diversity by means of rich, rewarding, sometimes even scary experiences flying in small planes to Valdez, Alaska; to Kotzebue, an Eskimo village near the North Pole; to cold, freezing Adak and Kodiak in Alaska for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard; flying in small planes to the Navajo reservations; to the Zuni Pueblo in Arizona; to Crownpoint, Arizona, where, in mid-air, we discovered the plane’s door on which I was leaning to take photographs was not shut-! 

[Slide of Curriculum Guidebook]

As a result of the design of learning environments and as a result of an exhibition at the Museum of History and Art in Anchorage Alaska, a whole curriculum to teach architecture and design to children has evolved.  This way of visual thinking can help us to help them design their own schools.

[Slide of Studio and Light table]

The classroom of tomorrow has students learning on their own in a design studio format.

[Slide of Drafting Tables]

The newer way of learning demands newer kinds of furniture lighting and personal study space.

[Slides of Teachers being trained]

I have been studying for many years the architectural design studio where architects are educated, and I see a great model for the American project-based classroom.  Teacher education will have to change to get the teacher off center stage and assume the role of facilitator.

[Slide of Children 1, 2] 

…The role of the teacher as facilitator of student self-learning, where research and creative problem solving is the responsibility of the student. 

[Slide of Taylor 1, 2]

[Here is] graphic and verbal presentations of their work by students thoughtfully critiqued by peer’s leads to improvement of the work.  The thinking process is prized and subject matter learning is embedded in the resulting products.

[Slide of Children Working]

I remember being a bit discouraged about all this hard work at one point, and calling my then 13-year-old daughter, Meredith, at home asking her to put some potatoes on to bake for dinner.  Sensing my discouragement about the progress of a playground construction, she said to me “Remember Mom, good things take time!”  I have never forgotten that advice and the work I have set out to accomplish is taking a lifetime. 

The years passed by quickly.  Like others in this field who have been pioneering with creative work, I am relieved that there is a growing movement to improve the quality of learning environments in America. I see a connection and role reversal for educators and architects.  To me, educators are the architects of the mind while architects are the educators of creativity, aesthetics, and building forms, which can teach.  This is the art of the future - environmental art -  beautiful and functional, helping the viewer and user to understand, revere, and become stewards of the environment in which they live, work and play. 

As my father (an educator) once said: One can learn how to earn a living in a very short time, but it takes a lifetime to learn how to live.  My goal is to empower children to be leaders  to become happy people who have learned how to live and have been optimally educated - an education that sees them physically fit, exposed to what is real and true, gives them a sense of ethics and aesthetics, the good, and the beautiful. Education must lift the spirits of children and prepare them to be the preservers of the environment in a democratic society while becoming active citizens of the world. As a futuristic myself, I want the next generation to be well prepared and to be on the cutting edge of the future!
Perhaps, we can move from preoccupation with the Gross National Product to be more like country of Bhutan, which prizes and proffers as their national goal  GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS!

[Slides of family]

Lastly I would like to say that what really matters in the world is family.  I would like to thank my three daughters Kim, Susan, and Meredith for their support through the years, especially when their were younger and Mom was off doing good for society.  They tell me now that it was great that I was so busy, that it made them independent and I wasn’t home to nag  them about cleaning up their room

[Slide of grandchildren]

My hope is that my lifetime of work will help all children to have the quality of life that we have experienced at Wells, to love learning, love themselves and love each other! 

[Slide of Olivia]