A teacher describes her story of feeling upset, blamed and unvalued when, as a casual teacher, she was suspended for one instance of student misbehaviour. She discusses her emotional response to this situation, specifically to the way that the school administration communicated with her. The chapter weaves together two established and complementary approaches to analysing this situation, positioning theory and narrative appraisal. It retells the story through positioning theory, in which the roles and expectations are made explicit, as the teacher sees them. It then connects this to existing work on narrative appraisal, identifying where the teacher experiences unresolved contradictions and related emotions. It proposes, through an analysis of this story, that this approach might be useful for helping teachers to develop critical emotional reflexivity. It also recognises problems with adding this kind of additional emotional labour to teachers’ load.