First-year teachers are told “you’ll cry every day.” That’s not normal. That’s a systemic design flaw we can fix. New research in Teachers College Record confirms emotional labor drives teacher burnout and attrition. The solution isn’t resilience training. It’s giving teachers time to design authentic, project-based learning that actually matters. I improved teacher retention by double digits in two years. Not by telling teachers to regulate their emotions better. By fixing the broken system. So