Art education offers a way to reach students and make schools more relevant for them. Art teachers can create alternative formats that allow students to explore and learn about their lives. Thereby, students and their communities become the focus of the curriculum and students' responses are valued as individual expression. While teaching art in Philadelphia schools, the author began to explore connections between curriculum and teaching techniques and thought of strategies she believed would be beneficial to her students. Now in her new role as an art teacher educator, teaching prospective and practicing art teachers in the current climate of "reform" is a pressing challenge. In this article the author discusses critical literacy and its connections to art education. She provides examples from her own experience as a middle school art teacher in the School District of Philadelphia, and more recently as an art teacher educator.