Inspired by Martin Thrupp's deep commitment to teachers and teaching as a profession, we consider from our perspectives as teacher educators how critical engagement with educational developments and social issues is important for student teachers. Martin was concerned about a neoliberal trend to de-professionalise teaching and championed the role of teachers (including student teachers) as informed, skilled, critical professionals. We blend theory and experience to examine how critical engagement with policy, practice and contemporary educational issues is central for student teachers in becoming teaching professionals and for teacher educators. We reflect in turn on student teachers' capacity for critical engagement with challenges they experience in learning to teach, developing complex hope as a Pacific teacher educator who is responsible for the development of ITE courses about cultural responsiveness and Pacific as priority learners, and the importance for teachers to have critical understanding of curriculum and assessment developments. Counter to the politics of blame and a prominent deficit discourse that positions new teachers as lacking and teachers in general as somehow responsible for perceived educational failures, we posit a hopeful view of student teachers as critically attuned professional educators.