Engaging students to interact critically in contemporary problems and topics of civic engagement empowers their critical hope for the future and their own advocacy for a more equitable community. Building on Jeff Duncan-Andrade's theory of of critical hope, the presenter will share a framework and examples on combining civic engagement topics, critical thinking, information literacy, and academic vocabulary development in a pre-transfer-level reading-composition course and take participants through a journey of how to help students understand the nature of injustice, the reasons for engagement or bystanding, the architecture of activism, and the power of non-violent resistance.