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“Who am I?”, there seems to be no certain answers towards this everlasting philosophical question. It’s really hard to self-identify when thinking in multiple perspectives. I got both biological identity and social identity, I can define myself a woman, a daughter, a Chinese, a student, a feminist, etc. To some extent, it’s defined by what environment I’m in, which group I belong to, what I believe and how I view myself. At the college I joined a “study group” which aims to discuss political issues, we defined ourselves “the Left wings” or “the radicals” and it really gave me a strong sense of belonging. And when I was working in Uganda or when I was travelling abroad, I defined myself as a “foreigner” or an “outsider” with regards to the local community. I would say my identity is myriad and fluid.

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"Who am I?" , a question I have also pondered for a long time. For my family, I am the daughter of my mum and dad and the sister of my brothers, but for my studies, I am a student studying to teach English as a foreign language. However, I think I will have more to say about my identity at work. I am an educator, a teacher of English, and I teach English to senior students in a secondary school in Guangzhou, helping them to build a foundation for their future entrance exams.

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I am an English teacher specialized in teaching grammatical knowledge and exam-centred skills. I am also a teacher who cares about students' mental health and motivation of learning English. Moreover, I want to be a friend of my students', inspiring them not only with the way of English learning but also with my values and philosophy of life.

Actually, at first, I only regarded the title "English teacher"as a job, a way to earn a living after returning back to my hometown as being a teacher is somehow easier to be respected. I spent two months being trained and preparing. But not until the first class with a student did I realize the true feeling of being a teacher. When the student said he loved having class with me, I knew it was more than a job. I spent more time and fees training myself, aiming at providing them with a more quality couse. And then I found some of them were suffered from learning English due to the bad performance in exams. I tried to communicate with them and their parents,telling them something related to the adolescent rebellion, mental health, motivation of English learning, and even the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve,in order to convince parents that learning English was not only a process of reciting vocabularies and doing test papers. Since then I have been focusing more on students' mental health besides academic performance. I gradually become a friend of theirs. And the most impressive thing for me is that one day, one of my students, who is a 14-year-old shy boy, said to his mom that he would like to be an English teacher like me. His words means a lot to me. I really appreciate that being a language teacher opens the window for me to communicate, collaborate and make progress with those lovely teenagers and makes me push myself more. That's also why I am here, studying the master courses of TESOL.

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I define myself as an introvert, most of the time I prefer to be alone and don’t want to engage in too many social activities. But my jobs (either being a tour guide in Uganda or a teacher who taught large classes) require me to connect with relationships with others frequently, which, in part, force me to be more extroverted. Then I’ve “learned” to be a different person in front of different people. Now I may see myself as “ambivert”, I can show my different sides in different contexts at appropriate times. But at root, I feel not so comfortable when I have to socialize, it sometimes makes me exhausted.

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I define myself as a learner, a follower of teaching who is constantly learning new ideas about education. Although I am a teacher and have a experience of teaching, my most fundamental identity is that of a learner because, I am constantly learning from those who have extensive teaching experience, learning through my students in the process of imparting knowledge, reflecting on myself and improving my professional knowledge base.

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I claim that I am an interesting teacher, trying to motivate my students being interested in learning English. I am assigned to be a teacher specialized in an exam-centred skills, improving students' grades in exams. I am trying to combine these two perspectives.

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- My personal identity: normally I will show my “extroverted” side when I’m teaching large classes, trying to be more engaged with the students by arranging different kinds of task-based activities, joining their discussion and giving them instant feedback. My class is often, as what students say, lively and interesting. From this point, I think showing an extroverted identity helps to create a good classroom atmosphere.

- My professional identity: Being a “good” teacher, either I see myself or others see me, is important in my cognition. This belief makes me constantly modify my classes to make them better.

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My professional identity, first of all I am an educator, as a teacher, I will use my knowledge of pedagogical psychology and English to enhance my teaching content, I need to adjust my pedagogy according to the students' learning situation and the level of activity in the class, and adjust the difficulty of the teaching content according to the level of activity of the students, according to the professional knowledge learned, for example, ZPD. I use games to engage students' interest and increase their participation.

Secondly, I am still a learner and in the process of teaching practice, I continue to identify problems and learn from good teaching experiences, for example, how to set up teaching activities to engage students' interest in learning. These are my identities impact on my pedagogy and classroom practice.

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At the begining of the first class, I always open by saying "What's your hobby? Do you like playing games like 'Honor of Kings' (a popular game among Chinese ) " If I get the answer "yes", I will compare the English learning progress to the progress of playing the game. In this way, most students are more likely to be interested in learning English with me.

However, if it is closed to the final exam or the entrance exam for high school, I will stress more on those exam-centred skills, asking them to do more test papers and reciting vocabularies on a daily basis.

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From my own experience, I don’t like to make a clear distinction between “teacher” and “students”. I would not position my students as those who just sit there listening to what I’m talking. Instead, I view them as initiative learners who help to co-construct the teaching and learning process. I’m more inclined to put us at a relatively equal position. When I’m giving speaking classes, sometimes I’d like to be the listener and listen to what my students want to share with me. I put away my persona of “teacher” and tend to be a “friend” of them, which let them feel more relaxed and helps to increase their involvement.

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In my teaching experience, students are the masters of the classroom and the teacher is the supporter. Students are guided by the teacher to acquire knowledge through independent and collaborative learning, and both teachers and students are learners. Through classroom practice and learning, teachers can adjust their teaching style, while students can improve their professional knowledge and competence through learning.

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Because I teach students in one-on-one classroom, I always say to the student that you are the center of our class, which means you must post questions and interchange ideas. If you are not engaged, nothing will work. I oberve,talk in order to get their physical and mental feedback to adjust the content of the course directly. That's the benefit of one-on-one modol to my view.

During the break, I sometimes invite students to play some games like playing the Switch or talk with them about what happened in their school life, trying to be a true friend of theirs.

Sometimes , they complain about the difficulties of learning English and I will give suggestions using my personal experience instead of directly telling them what to do and not to do.