This paper attempts to answer a key question in teacher education: what does it mean to be a literacy teacher in K-12 schools in challenging times? The question emerges from a series of dialogues between student teachers and the instructor in a graduate course in education to prepare pre-service teachers to support students in elementary schools where diversity and disability are part of the daily challenges teachers face in designing effective curriculum and instruction in literacy across the curriculum. The conversations are presented as topics students developed in their reflective journals in the Internship and Student Teaching courses in the fall and spring semester of their graduate year. The topics reflect what the student teachers experienced in their placements, how their self-reflective processes supported student teachers to an in depth understanding of what it means to be an educator in challenging times in education. The paper demonstrates that the challenge is to turn challenges into strength. How teachers will reduce the literacy gap for students who are linguistically and culturally diverse and with diverse abilities in a society that requires solid literacy foundations.