Chapter 3: Our Friend Martin: Using Culturally Relevant Video to Initiate Critical Conversations About Race in an Urban Classroom

As instructors of elementary social studies methods, each semester presents the challenge of convincing senior education majors that social studies is still a relevant subject to teach to their students. With many districts under pressure to meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act as well as to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) for reading and mathematics, there is a high probability that teacher candidates will not observe much social studies instruction. It is unfortunate that social studies testing is not emphasized, because this lack of emphasis minimizes the importance of the subject (Ediger, 2004). However, as teacher educators, it is important, we believe, to support teacher candidates in seeing social studies as a way to meet the needs of students who are culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse. Although at times teacher candidates do not perceive a social studies methods course as a forum for addressing diverse learners’ needs, we have explored the use of particular materials that assist our teacher candidates’ understandings of diverse learners in the context of social studies curriculum. In particular we explore a resource that shows students that their culture does matter in school, and that provides students from diverse backgrounds with an equitable education. One of these resources is the Our Friend Martin¹ video.