This chapter presents the story of Alanna, a pre-service teacher who confronts difficult emotions during an encounter with a student whilst learning to teach. The chapter shows that as a result of this encounter, Alanna engages in differing kinds of emotional labour to surface act and buffer her problematic feelings, which emerge at this early stage of a pre-service teacher learning trajectory. This chapter argues that emotional norms operate within Alanna’s processes of learning to teach through adherence to specific rules about teacher emotional conduct in school sites. Alanna’s story shows that pre-service teachers engage in practices of self-care that produce a certain kind of desirable teaching self. Yet, such practices also carry dangers, such as the uncertainty Alanna feels about her responsibility to the student. This approach to the emotional experiences of pre-service teachers offers novel methodological, theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of emotion research in education contexts and to initial teacher educators.