This article explores the relationship between teachers' emotions and possibilities for their activism. Using the lens of emotion labor and grounded in a discursive approach to emotions, it examines English language teachers' responses to institutional power. High-stakes literacy testing is used as an example of top-down institutional policies that may conflict with English language teachers' training and/or pedagogical preferences thereby producing emotion labor. However, rather than viewing emotion labor as a psychological impediment, the article proposes that it be honored, in the service of teacher activism. Suggestions for recruiting emotion labor for transformational purposes are offered.