This inquiry into a course on adolescent literacy education uses a case-study and descriptive review analysis to understand how multimodal spaces engage preservice and in-service teachers' sense making around concepts of race, language, and culture. Drawing on critical feminist and practitioner inquiry frameworks, this article presents what a teaching team learned when designing, enacting, and reflecting on efforts to engage students in hard talk. Three ideas surfaced from the events that occurred before, during, and after a class that occurred in the middle of the course. This study has implications for educators committed to critical pedagogies, multicultural education, and teacher education.