I am not sure I have a philosophy. I would rather say that I have ideas about who I should be, what teaching should be, and what my students should learn, and those ideas guide me, but they are certainly not carved in stone. In fact, what I like about those ideas is that they can change as I change, they can evolve as I learn more about myself and my students, and they can adapt to different teaching contexts. My first TESOL teacher told us that we teach the way we have been taught. I believe that we teach the way we are at that particular time. Let me try to explain who I am and some of these ideas that influence my teaching.

I come from a family where education is highly valued. I consequently grew up in an environment where options of finishing high school or getting a Master's degree were not even discussed since it was as natural as eating dinner every evening. One thing that this environment provided me with was a deep respect for, and value of education. I believe that many political and social problems in our societies today could be solved by giving children and adults a better education and especially teaching them the value of extensive knowledge. I always try to talk to my older students about that, and to make them realize that what they learn will become who they are and that studying to get an A is fine, but studying to become a person who can reason, think. and understand the world better is even more important. I also consequently try to create activities or start discussions for the whole class or in my students' individual journals that will allow them to discover the importance of knowing more. Recently, for example, as one student had made a comment about the US starting a war in Iraq, I responded with my own point of view on the question and some in depth questions about the problem. My comments and questions caught the attention of the students who did some research on his own and explained what he had found out in his next journal entries. We continued this "discussion" for several weeks until the students finally said that he was realizing how little he knew when he had first made those comments about the war in Iraq and how good he felt now to be able to have an "informed" and "adult" conversation with other people about this topic.

Another thing that my own education has taught me is the "teach and be taught" principle. This means that if I am ready to teach my students all I know, I expect them to teach me something in return. I also expect myself to read extensively in all possible areas and genres, that is, not just about "education" but about current events, popular culture, recent discoveries in sciences, etc. Indeed, with the age difference growing between my freshmen and me, it becomes increasingly important for me to stay in touch with my students' world, with their beliefs and culture, with what interests them and catches their attention. My students and I must take advantage not only of a possible age difference but also of an immense variety of languages, ideas, beliefs, points of views, histories, experiences, etc. Whatever the topic of the day might be, we always ask everyone for his or her opinions and discuss different points of view without judging them but with an open mind. It helps the students realize that even someone from the same town and of the same age can have different but similarly valuable opinions. And I like to extend this information-sharing process to the real world: in the research I had my students do recently, I asked them to talk to people from different cultures and to compare these other cultures to theirs, in order for them to realize how varied our world is. Many students have expressed how surprised they were to quickly find themselves interested in what they had learned for that project and that they would no longer be afraid to make friends with "different" people! Reading those comments is for me a definite sign of success: yes, some students will get an A for that project, but even if they don't, they will never forget this experience, which will shape forever their understanding of the world and their acceptance of differences.

Finally, another thing that my childhood environment also provided was an interested about several areas of learning. Indeed, the European ways of teaching, in addition to the fact that everyone in my family was interested in different things, gave me a rather wide, if not always in depth, knowledge of multiple topics (history, literature, sciences, music, arts, etc.) rather than an in depth knowledge of one topic. This variety of interests I was exposed to certainly influenced me deeply since today, I believe that specialization in one area only is not the right path to a successful life. Having a wide range of ideas fosters critical thinking and allows for more informed judgments, What this translate to in my teaching is the need that I feel to expose my students to a wide variety of topics--arts, politics and history, sciences, our society and beliefs, cultures, languages, psychology, religions, the world, literature from different countries, etc. We learn about these topics through readings, discussions, movies, writings, and exposure to the "real thing." These topics can be incorporated in any creative way as parts of the curriculum or as extra activities, but in general, I have always tried to make them the overt backbone of anything we do in class. For example, last week we read a text that I had found in a collection of articles put together for "people under the age of 25." This article was a mix of facts and statistics about drug problems in Thailand, descriptions by the author of a Thai family touched by this problem, and personal information about the author himself when he was addicted to drugs earlier in his life. The discussion which took place after my students had read the article was so intense and touching that it once again proved to me how little they knew about the difficult lives of others and how interested they can become if given the chance to learn about the lives of others, especially if the information is not too dry and might be somehow related to the experiences of some of these students.

So these are the ideas that shape my teaching. Yes, my responsibility as a teacher is to teach ESL reading, freshman composition, or whatever else I have been assigned to teach. However, my responsibilities are far greater than that: I must learn more every day in order to understand our world better so that I can prepare my students to live in it more effectively; I must show them the chance they have to be educated and the value of what they learn even beyond the walls of the classroom; I must tell them that I am opening a door for them and holding their hands for the first steps, but that they must become independent and strong enough to keep walking by themselves pretty quickly. This means that on the first day of class and all throughout the semester I will explicitly tell my students and remind them of the short-term and long-term goals I have for them: I will follow the textbook and teach them effective basic writing skills if this is what is expected of me, but that I also expect them to become critical thinkers, knowledgeable adults, and avid learners.

On a more personal note, I should say that the major reason why I love teaching, and teaching ESL in particular is because it has taught me so much about our world. The different experiences are infinite, and the possibilities for learning for my students and me are without limits. This desire of mine to always learn more does not seem to be a "teaching philosophy" at all. However, I have discovered that once the students realize that I acknowledge that I know more than they in certain areas but that at the same time, they know more than me in other areas and that this knowledge of theirs is also valued, real learning can take place and mutual respect is established. This attitude has also influenced my students to realize that no one knows everything but that everyone's experiences are valuable and that we should all be open to learning more from one another every day, even outside of the classroom environment.

If I sometimes feel discouraged or undervalued, I remind myself of the wonderful responses many students have given me not only in standard, official evaluations but also in person or in letters. A Korean student once wrote me, a year after she had taken an ESL reading class with me: "At the time, I did not always understand you or agree with your teaching methods because I only wanted to pass the class and the "rest" was a waste of time to me. Now that I am in college and becoming and ESL teacher myself, I see the value of what you have done for us and will try to become as great a teacher for my students as you were for me."

December 2002