Low levels of literacy engagement by Years 9 and 10 students impact on their achievement in curriculum subjects such as Social Studies in New Zealand secondary schools. The majority of students entering secondary school possess sufficient foundation skills for further scaffolded subject literacy instruction, but some consistently resist or refuse to engage with text. Faced with this, the teacher works increasingly harder to compensate for reluctant readers and writers. This is the story of one teacher's changing practice as the result of professional learning in "The Secondary Literacy Project" (Ministry of Education, 2009-11) which has resulted in a substantive change in her Social Studies classrooms, with "resistive" (Tovani, 2000, p. 14) readers now significantly more motivated and engaged in negotiating and responding to challenging texts.