"When we learn how to teach, we must also consider what it will feel like to teach."
Books by Diane Manser
I Didn’t Sign Up For This: One Classroom Teacher’s Journey Through Emotional Fatigue to Personal Empowerment
Is an honest narrative, filled with real-life teaching stories, pain points, feel good moments, and deep introspective learning that validate any teacher who has questioned themselves and the profession.
You will absolutely find yourself and what it feels like to be a teacher in this book.
I Didn't Sign Up For This is an honest, deeply relatable narrative filled with real-life classroom stories, raw challenges, uplifting moments, and transformative self-reflection.
Written to validate every educator who has ever questioned themselves or their future in education, this book offers a mirror to the authentic teacher experience. Journey through the realities of self-doubt and burnout into a state of emboldened empowerment—and gain the insights you need to navigate a career that is, above all else, deeply emotional.
Teaching is Emotional: Key quotes to get you thinking about the emotions of teaching (The Journal)
Teaching—more than is recognized—is an emotional profession that will challenge us in ways we may never have expected. Whether you’re a new teacher or a seasoned educator, you know that teaching has its way of lifting us up with moments of joy and fulfillment while also bringing moments of overwhelm and self-doubt.
Teaching can demand more than it gives, asking us to show up as educators, mentors, advocates, cheerleaders, and counselors. Journeying through this profession, we learn that our teaching day can stay with us long after the day has ended, and that sometimes it can test our patience, our resilience, and our sense of purpose. While we experience these feelings, we also trust that we are doing something special and unique as we serve others and as we give the best we can.
This journal book offers the necessary quotes that validate a teacher's journey and that brings reflection and connection.
THIS Is What I Signed Up For: A Guide For Teachers To Foster Empowerment, Build Resilience, and Embrace Who They Are
Is a reflective, interactive resource designed to help aspiring, new, and current educators gain intrapersonal awareness, understand their influence on their classroom culture, align personal values with classroom goals, manage stress to avoid burnout, and celebrate the resilience of confident educators.
PROJECT IN PROGRESS!!!
Seeking validation? Wanting to read and discuss with friends and colleagues?
Visit the Book Study page to experience meaningful quotes and chapter discussion questions for I Didn't Sign Up For This: One Classroom Teacher's Journey Through Emotional Fatigue to Personal Empowerment. This free guide provides readers reflective questions, quotes for consideration, and supplemental resources—all intended to encourage readers to reflect on their own teaching journey and build the tools that will bring them towards resiliency and empowerment.
Want to facilitate a book club with colleagues or friends and have the author join you? Let's connect!
Book praise by Rob Bell, New York Times Best-Selling Author, International Speaker, and Spiritual Teacher
“When I met Diane in the summer of 2023, she was telling a group of us what it’s like to be a teacher—how you start the school year strong in September, but then it’s very easy to find yourself wearing down over the coming weeks and months as a teacher’s interactions with her students can take a devastating emotional toll.
It was fascinating to hear her describe this phenomenon and how teachers aren’t taught what to do about it. I don’t know what it’s like to be a teacher, but as I looked around the group while Diane was talking, I could see everybody was as compelled as I was by her energy and insight and joy and honesty and fierceness.
That word FIERCENESS. Is that actually a word? Diane would know.
FIERCENESS is important here because she wasn’t complaining, she was explaining what she had learned about how to deal with these very real emotional challenges and how she wanted every teacher everywhere to discover what she’s learned. Which, of course, is why you’re holding this book in your hands.
It’s all here—coffee and tornadoes and doormats and AI and several decades of Diane’s wisdom on how to be a teacher in such a way that you find yourself saying ‘THIS IS WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR.’”
“I Didn’t Sign Up For This… will be immediately validating for teachers and enlightening for everyone else. It’s the beacon of light we need in an era when teaching is judged from the outside looking in and teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers. While Diane affirms that yes, teaching is emotional, she also gives us hope.”
—Kimberly English-Murphy, high school Gifted Teacher
