Though teacher attrition has always been an issue at the center of educational research, recent increased rates of turnover among veteran public education teachers before retirement suggests a new trend worth investigating. Prior research has shown connections between this trend and the increased focus on accountability mandates in the last two decades. The purpose of this study was to identify and explore changes within the human activity of teaching in the past twenty years for a group of veteran high school teachers, using the lens of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to shed a more comprehensive light on possible factors related to teacher satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the profession. The study focused on two main research questions: (1) How has the lived experience of the human activity of teaching for this particular group of veteran public-school teachers changed in approximately the last twenty years? and (2) Among those interviewed, if the human activity of teaching has changed, in what ways have these changes impacted their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the profession? The researcher used the six elements of Engestrom's second generation CHAT model (subject, object, rules, tools, division of labor, and community) to develop questions that were used in phone interview sessions with eight veteran high school teachers from three different school districts with over fifteen years of experience. The participants' responses indicated that satisfaction was primarily linked to changes in the activity of teaching when those changes were internally initiated and informed by the teacher based on their own intrinsic motivations, which were grounded in the experiences of the teacher and student, and the changes were supported, valued, and reinforced by the community. Dissatisfaction was noted when the changes were externally initiated and informed by someone other than the teacher based on extrinsic motivations, which were grounded in achieving a more narrowly defined quantitative outcome such as test scores, and those outcomes determined the support and value for the activity in the community. Participants' frustration was linked to a lack of voice, lack of trust, and lack of value for teaching and teachers reflected by these changes. Though they have found ways to combat and cope with the tensions related to these differing outcomes by maintaining their own intrinsic focus and partnering with parents, the participants acknowledge the resulting stress and strain has been increasing. These findings indicate that bureaucratic educational reforms within the last twenty years have led to cultural changes within the activity of teaching, which reflect a view of teaching that is fundamentally different from the way these teachers make sense and meaning within the activity. This cultural shift appears to be linked to political motivations whose transactional and economical perceptions of teaching and teachers serve to undermine both the intellectual and transformative power of the act itself. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]