This paper asks whether teachers and students can be friends with one another and yet maintain their integrity as teachers and students. It provides an account of friendship, drawing on Aristotle, Montaigne, and contemporary work by Elizabeth Telfer and Lawrence Blum, and addresses two key challenges: first, that teachers must be impartial and this impartiality is impeded by friendship, and, second, that friendship interferes with the pedagogical relationship. The paper concludes that neither objection is insurmountable, though both suggest important caveats. This paper also discusses two reasons to recommend friendship between teachers and students: friendship mitigates some of the harm effected by schools as institutions, and furthermore scholarship in the history and sociology of childhood suggests that there is reason to believe that children are often better off when they have adults as friends, though their opportunities to make such friends are limited. This paper concludes that friendship between teachers and students is sometimes justifiable, provided it stays within ethical boundaries. Furthermore, because of the positive benefits that friendship brings, friendship between teachers exercising good judgment and students in need of an adult friend is sometimes the more ethical response. (Contains 8 notes.)