The author, who worked as an adjunct while completing doctoral coursework in English education, had been teaching for 10 years but during most of that time had been a high school teacher. While working in an alternative high school, she had a great deal of freedom in instituting a critical literacy approach and social justice curriculum. The amount of writing that these high school students did, especially by their senior year was quite demanding. This article shares her experiences with these students, in which she found that there is really no substitute, time and institutional constraints notwithstanding, for getting down on the page with her students and engaging with their writing where it is, where they are, and where she is. She believes that (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)