James A. Banks Sylvia Ashton-Warner Paulo Freire Three Inspiring Educators

1. James A. BanksSylvia Ashton-WarnerPaulo FreireThree Inspiring Educators

2. James A. Banks • Born September 24th, 1941. • Grew up as an African American in Arkansas during the time of the Jim Crow laws. • He walked 5 miles to get a formal education at the McCullough Union School. • He graduated from Robert Russa Moton High School in 1960. • He obtained his associates degree 3 years later. Along with a bachelor's degree in elementary education and social science with honors the following year. • He went on to receive his masters degree and PhD in these fields from Michigan State University. • Banks married Cherry A. McGee February 15, 1969. • He became the first black professor in the College of Education at UW, as well as the founding director of UW's Center for Multicultural Education.

3. Contributions • father of multi-cultural education • developed countless concepts, approaches, and principles of curriculum for educators across the nationto help them teach a multicultural nation. • developed techniques for teaching and assessing specific ethnic groups. • has helped start a movement to reform textbooks so that they include the perspective of different cultures, not just the dominant one.

4. Contributions 5 dimensions of Multicultural Education • content integration • knowledge construction • equity pedagogy • prejudice reduction • empowering school culture and social structure

5. Sylvia Ashton Warner • New Zealand, December 17, 1908 - April 28, 1984 • Mother was a teacher, father stayed home (suffered from rheumatoid arthritis), nine children • Pursued teaching although she was more interested in the arts • Not wholeheartedly attracted to teaching at first because of mother's neglect and strictness • Determined to find a motherly and loving figure - eventually desired to BE that for students

6. Contributions • She is most famous and known for her educational methods that she wrote in her 1963 thesis called Teacher. • There was a movie made about Sylvia and her life called “Sylvia.” • Her famous book Teacher, expresses her ideas for education. • Sylvia broke free from the traditional methods of teaching. • Ashton-Warner used physical nurturing of students. • She wrote many other short stories that became well known throughout New Zealand and the rest of the world.

7. Paulo Freire The attainment of literacy can be, and should be, intricately tied to personal, social, and political liberation • Freire was born September 19, 1921 in Recife, Brazil • 1944, he married Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, a fellow teacher • 1962 Freire taught the sugarcane workers of Angicos, South America • 1964, a military coup imprisoned Friere as a "traitor" for 70 days • Freire exiled himself to Bolivia • 1967, Freire published Education as the Practice of Freedom • He followed this with Pedagogy of the Oppressed • 1979, he was able to return to Brazil • 1986, his wife Elza died • Freire remarried to Maria Araújo • Freire died of Congestive heart failure on May 2, 1997

8. Inspired others to follow Liberation Theology/Social Reconstructionism • Taught and inspired others to teach reading and writing to oppressed peoples • Believed that teachers must also learn with the students • Appointed for several high educational advising and directing positions throughout his life for his work Teaching Reading and Writing: • Employ “generative words” • Accompany these words with pictures or “codes” • Learner’s directed to a syllabic family in a word list • Words are written on a board and learner’s are encouraged to discuss these words with their world http://www.freireproject.org/content/intro-video