This study reports on the dilemmas of practice experienced by a parent-school facilitator, Melanie, within a large urban school district. Melanie struggled to reconcile her commitment to families in her school with the demands placed on her by an administrative ideology that viewed families as adversaries. Her attempts to manage the conflicts induced by this situation remained trapped in a polarizing discourse of families as marginalized within an insensitive school system. Using a theoretical framework that intertwines dialogism with the role of emotion in socially just education, I analyze Melanie's narrative to uncover the ways in which she enacted her ideological commitments while constructing the position of her school administration as indefensible. I deploy such analysis to animate the links between emotional labor within challenging schooling contexts and an equally politicized stance of engagement to accomplish the ends of social justice.