In the 1990s, teacher educators began to hear about the importance of studying and reporting on "best practices" in literacy learning to narrow the gap between high-and low-performing students. Of the studies produced, few of them looked to research in areas such as bilingual education for guidance on how to improve teaching reading for Spanish-dominant children. This year-long, qualitative study attempts to offer insight about how an exemplary Mexican bilingual teacher mobilizes her 1st-grade students' linguistic and cultural resources in Spanish to develop critical literacy skills that foster healthy literate identities and classroom communities for these Latino students.