Within the UK there are grave concerns about retention and attrition rates within the teaching profession, particularly in challenging schools. These are compounded by worries about the gap that will be left as long-serving teachers reach retirement age. This article is about the working lives of long-serving teachers in three high-poverty urban schools in England. In a climate in which teaching is tightly controlled and suffering from problems of retention and recruitment, the teachers discuss intensely personal and emotional commitments to their work-place. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 long-serving teachers, all of whom had management responsibilities, are used to explore their lives and careers. These histories evoke a strong sense of the ideas and values that make up their personal and professional identities. These are then contrasted with the ideas and values in officially mandated views of progression within the profession. Within the stories of their professional lives, the teachers talk about the emotional dimensions of their work and the emotional ties of their "work-place". The article concludes that recognition of the emotional dimensions within teachers' work at an official level could go some way to helping with recruitment and retention in schools facing challenging circumstances. (Contains 1 note.)