This article presents the text of Keith Gilyard's presidential address, delivered at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 18, 2012. In his address he proposes several core elements that he believes will instrumentally improve the education system in the United States: a rich variety of reading and writing experiences to foster critical language awareness and rhetorical capacity; a doctrine of linguistic equality to promote fuller participation by a diverse student body; media initiatives to enhance explicitly and implicitly the development of student-citizens; productively crafted "street corners" inside schools to induce unanticipated encounters; and provision of funding to strengthen the functioning of schools as instruments of social and economic opportunity.