This qualitative study works to understand how secondary level literacy teachers conceptualize effective teaching practices. Concepts such as success and effectiveness are difficult to define, but they are nonetheless used in concrete ways to make decisions about teachers' performance. In this study, literacy teachers themselves explain what it means to be effective in their work by sharing their "success stories." Findings focus on the settings, characters, turning points, and conflicts that are central to teachers' understandings of success, providing implications for how teachers might center their values amidst multiple and at times conflicting demands on their practice.