Some scholarship suggests that critical pedagogy should be abandoned for more pragmatic goals. While the democratic and political sensibilities of critical pedagogy require more from the instructor, classrooms that on the surface do not appear to work in teaching students should not be seen as signs that the pedagogy is not worth the extra effort. The classroom experience recounted in this piece suggests that blundered implementation can function as an opportunity to advance knowledge and to understand the ongoing project of critical pedagogy, strengthening it even as we realize that critical pedagogy cannot look and feel like status quo teaching and still enact progressive goals.