Humanizing pedagogies present a promising framework for contesting dehumanizing practices all too common in U.S. urban schools. To co-construct such pedagogies, however, teachers and students must negotiate between the humanizing and dehumanizing discourses that circulate within their school context. Drawing from data collected from a qualitative study of literacy conferences in three urban elementary classrooms, I use microethnographic and critical approaches to discourse analysis to explore two sets of conflicting discourses mobilized by teachers and students in their pedagogical interactions: curriculum as tailored versus standardized and as present oriented versus future oriented. To further explore how teachers and students interact amidst the tensions between these discourses, I present a close analysis of a writing conference in which a teacher-student pair prepare for the upcoming high-stakes writing test. This analysis makes visible challenges and possibilities of teachers and students co-constructing humanizing pedagogies while suggesting the need to attend to its temporal dimensions.