I believe that to teach is to take responsibility for the development of young minds. It is to commit yourself to guiding children in their development in many ways-intellectual, moral, social, and personal. To teach is to learn and to grow each day, and to guide your students to do the same. I believe that my strengths as a teacher come largely from my view of myself as a model of lifelong learning. Enthusiasm, interest, and intellectual vibrancy are qualities that persist in everything I pursue. As a teacher, those qualities help children to develop a love of learning that I so consciously and constantly attempt to model. I show this in the classroom through the books that I read to the students and the subjects that I teach. This belief is supported by the CCT, (Common Core of Teaching, 1999), which states that the responsibility of a teacher is to help students develop positive self-concepts. Another important aspect of this is to demonstrate enthusiasm for the discipline that he/she teaches in the classroom.