This article shares the case of a student-driven?investigation?into?social issues from an eighth-grade civics class at an American school in Mexico. Through vignettes about the teaching and learning process, the author argues that a focus on students' inquiry into their social contexts rather than on specific social justice content is a key practice when teaching for critical democratic literacy, especially when teachers and students come from different social contexts. This article offers a concrete example of how foregrounding students' critical questions can help move students toward social justice-oriented citizenship.