Balancing chemical equations presents a high demand on middle school students’ cognitive ability, and I noticed the students’ only strategy when encountering difficult content was to raise their hands and wait to be helped by me. While teacher support was available, students were lacking options for coping with productive struggle. Rather than simply listing strategies, I chose to seek students’ insights on how to engage with challenging problems. We were able to identify resources available to them, including peer collaboration, class materials, and online resources, in order to take steps when they felt confused or stuck. Students took ownership of the classroom norms, creating a meaningful shift in classroom culture. Many students who had previously raised their hands in defeat were making more of an effort to face challenges head-on. In turn, this raised the quality of questions and observations; students put more time and thought into identifying their underlying misconceptions after investigating other resources. The role of the teacher was now an equally valuable resource among many others that could be used in the classroom.