For the duration of the author's fifteen-year career, she has used authentic writing opportunities to engage students. She begins as their teammate, and invites each student to work with her on a poem. In working collaboratively, students realize the author is there not to downgrade their piece, to chastise mistakes or to belittle errors; she is there to guide, to polish, and to perfect. They are a team, working together to create the best piece of art they can. In this article, the author describes how her students at Arrowhead Union High School in Hartland, Wisconsin participated in a competition in honor of conservationist Rachel Carson and applied a collaborative approach to writing poetry about nature.