This article explores the images and metaphors that teachers use when speaking of their relations with students and examines how these images work to call into play particular constructs of gender relations. Of specific interest is the way teachers use binaries of open/closed, in control/out of control and maturity/immaturity to make sense of feminine and masculine conduct respectively. It is argued that such binary differentiations work not only as descriptors of 'truths' concerning student-teacher relations, but also as means of constituting and normalizing particular forms of gender relations. Implications of such metaphorical constructions for gender reform within schools are considered.