This article describes a case study about how teacher education might better prepare rural teacher candidates for rural schools. The author concludes that participants emphasized the importance of personal relationships, relationships both within the school and the relationship between the school and community. However, it was found that the participants in this study also perceived school and community as a site of ambiguity and ambivalence, a site of strategy, negotiation, and resistance. The authors suggests that teacher candidates should be prepared to learn about rural communities in ways that do not reinstate deficit perspectives and increase the likelihood that they will choose rural teaching appointments.