Using data sets from classroom and non-classroom settings, this paper displays two examples of the interactional work that goes into preparing for learning and how the subsequent learning/teaching activities are performed. In both cases, participants co-construct learning/teaching spaces; the paper displays how the two contexts call on different resources to attain this. Also, the actual learning sequences in interaction, framed around repair activities, are different in the two contexts; in the wild, the learning space is more condensed, embedded in the business-doing of the service encounter, whereas in class the activities are more extensive, the consequentiality is relaxed as speakers easily refer back to former repair work and word searches, and they draw on writing and reading to a degree arguably scarcely possible in non-classroom contexts.