For our second paper, each of you is going to present one of your past teachers or professors as either a banker or a problem-poser, as defined by Freire. Using both textual evidence from Freire's essay and a series of specific, richly detailed examples, argue that your chosen teacher represents either a banker, a problem-poser, or a blend. The goal is to indicate if the teacher's methods were effective in helping you to learn, so make sure that there is an evaluative quality to your essay that critiques either the individual teacher or Freire's definitions of good and bad teaching.
Your focus should follow one of the two following patterns:
- Offer a specific evaluation using Freire's terminology of your chosen teacher.
- Critique (either positively or negative) Freire's ideology using your chosen teacher as an example supporting your critique of Freire.
A successful paper will do the following:
- Be 4-6 pages long using the class format
- Clearly identify Freire and his essay in the introduction
- Clearly identify the teaching professional under discussion
- Clearly label that individual's teaching style in Freire's terms
- Offer a critique (either positive or negative) of either the teacher or Freire's theories
- Provide rich examples of the teacher's behavior and student learning
- Link the examples to passages from Freire
- Employ proper MLA-Style quotation standards
- Use at least one block quote
- Include a proper MLA-Style works cited page
- Use both a semi-colon and colon correctly in the paper. Errors where either is used incorrectly or where they omitted when clearly needed will result in -2 each time.
- Use proper word processing commands to handle layout issue. Your use of MS Word skills will be evaluated separately using the MS Word Assignment rubric.
Potential dangers in this paper include the following:
- Failing to meet the page target
- Failing to introduce Freire and his essay in the introduction
- Starting your introduction with biographical information about Freire instead of a concept or issue
- Plagiarism
- Failing to identify the teacher under discussion
- Failing to offer a clear evaluation of the teacher or Freire's theories
- Using vague examples
- Forgetting to link examples from the professor's behavior to statements from Freire
- Confusing a teacher's likability with a teacher's effectiveness as an educator