This qualitative study of educators' understandings of resilience contributes to ongoing rural school research that examines educators' beliefs about, and attitudes toward, rural students whom are at-risk and factors that impact rural school success. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers and administrators in one rural Florida school that was reported as failing. The respondents identified individual students who they deemed resilient as well as character traits they deemed to be factors in building resilience. The principal had the experiential knowledge of rural and urban settings as well as skills required to build communities designed to increase resilience and improve student success. However, obstacles at the district and site levels meant that although individual examples of resilience were evident in this school, they were not actualized at systemic levels. The study also raises questions about conceptions of resilience related to students' exodus from their rural communities.