The task of successfully preparing teachers in the United State to effectively work with an ever-increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student body represents a pressing challenge for teacher educators. Unfortunately, much of this practice of equipping prospective teachers for working with learners from different backgrounds revolves around exposing these future educators to what are perceived as the best practical strategies to ensure the academic and linguistic development of their students. In this article, the author discusses the importance of infusing teacher education curricula with critical pedagogical principles in order to prepare educators to aggressively name and interrogate potentially harmful ideologies and practices in the schools and classrooms where they work. She maintains that teachers need to develop political and ideological clarity in order to increase the chances of academic success for all students. She also argues that it is imperative that these educators instill in their students in K-12 public schools the same kind of critical consciousness that enables them to read and act upon the world around them. The author first explains why it is necessary for teacher educators to recognize, better understand, and challenge the ideological dimensions of prospective teachers' beliefs and attitudes toward subordinated students. Next, she shares research results from her work at Riverview High School that illustrate the powerful potential of teachers' who critically understand the ideological and material obstacles faced by youth in schools, and their proactive responses as defenders of their students. Finally, she identifies key critical pedagogical principles that, interwoven into teacher education coursework and field experiences, have the potential to help develop in prospective teachers, much like the teachers in her research study, the ability to assume counter-hegemonic stances so as to create a "more equal playing field" for all students.