Drawing on Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse framework, the researchers investigated how two English as a second or foreign language instructors constructed their identity in a teaching philosophy statement written for a master's in TESOL (MATESOL) course. Analyses revealed that both instructors employed almost all metadiscourse resources in the model to construct the identity of a competent graduate student and that of a knowledgeable and reflective teacher. In addition, their identity construction reinforced the writing conventions associated with the imagined community (Norton, 2013) of graduate student teachers while also affording them the opportunity to exercise some degree of teacher agency. Findings offer insights into how linguistic resources can be mobilized to construct a strong and unique teaching philosophy statement.