How better can we prepare students for the roles awaiting them as citizens than by engaging them in addressing challenging issues of the day? We describe our experience as a researcher--practitioner partnership with this objective in a yearlong program involving academically low-performing urban middle schoolers and a student-centered instructional approach emphasizing peer-to-peer discourse. Thirty of the class's daily 45-minute social studies class periods for the year were devoted to in-depth engagement with three contemporary issues, each for 10 consecutive class sessions, thus affording students sustained practice in contemplating individually and with one another pressing issues of the day. Gains in students' written arguments as well as discourse skills are described and illustrated.