The work and lives of teachers have always been subject to external influence as those who are nearing the end of their careers will attest, but it is arguable that what is new over the last two decades is the pace, complexity, and intensity of change as governments have responded to the shrinking world of economic competitiveness and social migration by measuring progress against their position in international league tables. This is in part the reason the author has titled this article the "New Lives of Teachers." Parallel to these are the growing concerns with the new generation of "screen culture" children who, suggests one author (Greenfield, 2008), spend more time interacting with technology than with family or at school and whose attention span and sense of empathy are diminishing alongside real and potential conflicts in increasingly heterogeneous societies. As a result, there are regularly repeated claims that teacher educators are failing to prepare their students well enough and so governments promote apprenticeship models of training (not education). In the new lives of teachers, schools and classrooms have become, for many, sites of struggle as financial self-reliance and pressure for ideological compliance have emerged as the twin realities. Externally-imposed curricula, management innovations, and monitoring and performance assessment systems have been introduced but have often been poorly implemented, and have resulted in periods of destabilisation, increased workload, intensification of work, and a crisis of professional identify for many teachers who perceive a loss of public confidence in their ability to provide a good service. Educational researchers continue to critique policy and its consequences for recruitment, quality, and retention. However, it is important, having set the scene, to look more closely at what a range of research tells individuals about the new lives of teachers in terms of their continuing capacity to teach to their best.