Today, pedagogical stakes are high for students who experience incidents connected to their safety and privacy. Unfortunately, students live in an age when Code Red drills, or the more current Active Shooter drills, are a fact of life. In this article, the author argues that dystopian texts are not only positioned to enhance the complexity of reading literature but are urgently needed for students to conceive a brave new world in the high school English language arts (ELA) classroom. George Orwell called for a sense of being conscious to encroaching dystopia. In the author's classroom, students navigate what the author calls Orwellian Spaces to stimulate critical thinking about dystopian texts and the mirroring issues of the school. Crucial to this process is defamiliarization, a concept that presents familiar issues in unconventional settings and formats and allows students to develop new insights. Although a dystopian text addresses the ills (or speculated future ills) of society, it can be instrumental in helping students understand their world and engage in positive pedagogical practices to counter these ills. Typical secondary students are engulfed in the minutiae of home, school, practice, work, and social circle concerns. However, when a school community is the subject of headlines for the wrong reasons, it stands to reason that students may be primed for dystopian texts in ways that others may not.