The purpose of this paper is to explore a subset of findings taken from yearlong qualitative study of writing conferences in two diversely populated, urban high school classrooms. Drawing on multiple data sources, we used case study and discourse analytic methods to follow two focal students across the year in order to examine instructional and relational features of the teachers' writing conferences. One salient theme in the writing conference data was subtle student resistance to well-meaning teacher moves. Analysis generated a five-level continuum of resistance behaviors ranging from ignoring or hiding to changing the subject to lying. In this paper, we (1) examine ways that the students sometimes resisted teacher attempts to connect with them, and (2) portray teacher attempts to sensitively navigate the learning needs of those students while continuing to work on building trust-based relationships in their classrooms.