This paper presents the use of the arts and aesthetic education in a graduate literacy course for in-service and pre-service teachers followed by a description of how one graduate student implemented her learned theory in the high school classroom in which she taught. The core theory of the paper follows the assumption that aesthetic education elicits the imagination, and thus encourages multiple ways of interpreting and learning text. As such, the article invites the readers to view imagination and aesthetic education as active steps in creating awareness toward empathy and promoting socially just classrooms and practices. In addition, this article describes the implementation of one graduate in-service teacher's learned knowledge of aesthetic education into her own high school English classroom in an attempt to raise awareness for social justice. (Contains 3 images.)