This paper examines non-instructional conversation in the classroom and illustrates how the giving of advice is contingently arranged in student-teacher conversations about jail at one urban charter school. Drawing on data which was video-recorded during a two-year ethnographic study, I analyze how presupposed norms regarding jail, in combination with the creative use of indexical forms (e.g., you, everybody, people) function within conversation to invoke and create shared norms of behavior. By treating meaning as both emergent across individual turns, and dependent on presupposed cultural knowledge, this paper demonstrates how “rights to advise” are achieved in conversation. Conversations between teachers and students illustrate that certain ways of speaking have the power to create credibility and trustworthiness by displaying alignment, awareness of particular norms, and an orientation to certain local, peer group assumptions. The interactional work involved in these informal conversations suggests that similar collaboration may be necessary for other forms of classroom learning, and emphasizes the importance (and difficulty) of integrating students' own perspectives and experiences with more standardized educational goals.