Teaching is one of the most emotionally demanding professions in the world, yet no one talks about it. The quiet exhaustion between classes. The weight of holding students' lives. The constant, invisible work of managing a room's emotional climate while keeping your own feelings carefully in check. These are the realities teachers carry every day, rarely named and almost never supported. I Didn't Sign Up for This exposes the hidden emotional labor at the heart of teaching - the exhaustion, the weight of responsibility, and the invisible work teachers carry every day in systems never built to support them. Grounded in research and lived experience, this timely and compassionate book reframes burnout not as personal weakness, but as the result of unsustainable conditions. A validating mirror for teachers, and a vital wake-up call for school leaders and policymakers, it makes the case that emotional sustainability isn't a luxury - it's the foundation of effective teaching and student success.
Dr. Brandon Naylor is an educator, researcher, and advocate whose work is grounded in a single conviction: the well-being of teachers is inseparable from the well-being of students. With a doctorate in education and years of engagement with the educational field and communities across the United States, Dr. Naylor has built his career by listening deeply and without pretense. He has gathered stories in faculty lounges, in conference rooms, in parking lots after long school days, and in the quiet honesty of late-night video interviews with educators who trusted him with experiences they had rarely shared in official spaces. He has sat with first-year teachers navigating the gap between what they were promised and what they found, and with thirty-year veterans reflecting on the slow erosion of a profession they once loved without reservation. Dr. Naylor has presented at national and regional educational conferences, engaged in sustained dialogue with superintendents and district leaders across the country, and conducted extensive research on teacher burnout, organizational trust, professional autonomy, and the invisible labor that sustains public education. His work bridges the clinical and the human, translating decades of occupational health research into language that educators, administrators, families, and policymakers can act on.
