My Personal StatementWithin my 24-year experience of teaching ESL my philosophy has evolved. First, I am keen on being a facilitator, guide and motivator rather than an instructor. Thus, I strive to stimulate students' critical thinking skills and intellectual growth to set the stage for my learners' permanent learning experiences. My role as teacher is not merely supplying essential information but providing the means to acquire knowledge independently and to utilize learning ideas in new situations. For me, "a guide on the side," is fundamentally better than "a sage on the stage". I believe that my goal of becoming an outstanding teacher is a journey rather than a destination, therefore; I do all my best to be on the right track to keep on going. I believe that having the enthusiasm to achieve my goals effectively and professionally is crucial.Developing students' problem-solving strategies, insuring students' understanding foundational concepts and teaching students to work collaboratively are my ultimate goals. My students are often exposed to a tremendous amount of information that is essential to learning as well as communication. In addition to developing my students' ability to learn, I believe it is essential to model strategies that help students to link new material, processes, or problems to more familiar aspects of their lives so that the discipline-specific topic I am teaching becomes integrated into some existing knowledge base (assimilation). Since learning is a developmental process, students must develop a capacity for self-direction, self-monitoring, and self-generation of ideas. Advanced learning requires students to construct a conceptual framework that allows them to integrate and organize new knowledge and information into a coherent structure. Thus, my work as a teacher seeks to stretch and broaden a student's understanding by identifying the students' comprehensions grasp not too easy, but also not too difficult.Regards,