Purpose: This paper aims to consider the ways that students are shaped by and shape community and critical literacy, along with the ways that community affords student empowerment in an English class during a US high school summer enrichment program. Design/methodology/approach: The qualitative methodological approach is a narrative-based descriptive case study. To provide a detailed and narrative-based discussion, the authors incorporate ethnographic observation narratives and conversational interview excerpts, and analyze the data through inductive coding. Findings: Organizing the findings into two sections, "These kids are rebelling", and "We're trusting him to teach and do better now", we first examine the ways that student-led rebellion reshaped the classroom community and then the ways that the teacher's response redefined critical literacy approaches and his interactions with the students. Research limitations/implications: As this is a qualitative case study that is set during a summer enrichment program, its implications are not wholly generalizable to secondary English education. However, this research does suggest the importance of student agency in considerations of community and critical literacy. Practical implications: This research emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and exploring ways that students' everyday interactions and agency shape educational spaces. Additionally, this research suggests the importance of community and critical literacy to all teachers, no matter their levels of experience or success. Social implications: Students have tremendous potential to not only shape and define learning environments, but to transform pedagogy and teacher relationships. This research emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and exploring these implications specifically to transform community and critical literacy in a summer high school English classroom. Originality/value: First, this paper examines student community as an agentive and rebellious influence within the everyday constructs of schooling, and the authors assert that critical literacy pedagogies may be student-driven as part of community-based activism. Second, this paper seeks to explore both "community" and "critical literacy" as key concepts in positioning students as influential and empowered stakeholders with capacities to reshape education.