Building upon the theory of teacher cognition, the purpose of this study was to discover how pre-service teachers envision "learning" English as English Language Learners (ELLs) and "teaching" English to ELLs. We examined metaphors of 98 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in their first literacy methods course in their preparatory program at one of two universities in the United States. We used metaphor analysis methodology to look at the participants' metaphor writing samples. Overall results showed the pre-service teachers viewed "learning" English to be foremost a challenge and secondarily a worthwhile challenge. In contrast, the pre-service teachers viewed "teaching" English to be a worthwhile challenge, followed by a challenge and process. Throughout this paper we highlight our reflection and relate our findings to previous research. To be a responsive teacher educator begins by knowing our pre-service teachers.