If a teacher these days says "critical" we can not be certain what it means.

Critical as in awaken to a critical communist consciousness, where one sees everything through the Marxist lense of fake oppressed vs false oppressor (AKA woke), and criticizes the current system and seeks to overthrow the government and put Marxists in power ...

or critical as in the traditional critical thinking where one uses the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices.