Research shows that developing students' resilience can rapidly raise student achievement in mathematics. Despite recognising its importance, teachers often do not have access to a repertoire of practices to develop resilient mathematics learners. The present study explores aspects of resilience among a cohort of students from three low socio-economic, high poverty, urban schools in New Zealand. Our exploration uncovers some aspects of the students' perceptions (about learning mathematics) that were favourable and/or problematic with respect to the development of resilience. Implications for furthering the development of resilient learners are discussed.