The reason my grade three teacher-I did so well that year. He was the only teacher that took what I was good with and ran with it.

"Oh, you like to read? Great! An hour a day, I'm reading to the class. An hour a day, you read by yourself. I'll let you read wherever you want in the school. Wander off if you want, you don't have to sit in the classroom." Which I loved, 'cause there was a perfect spot underneath the stairs for me. ...And he was the only teacher that wasn't scared of me. 'Cause all my other teachers were, they'd seen me behave so badly, they were scared. And he was the first teacher who went "You know, she's probably not that scary, there's probably something wrong, and if I just let her do what she wants to do I'm sure she'll figure it out. She seems quite intelligent." And he said to me the first day-I had all these panics about going into grade three, and he was like "You seem to be intelligent. I'm not sure why no one else has noticed this, but you seem to be very intelligent. You can read and you can write, and this is pretty much what they expect of you in grade three. You seem to be able to do that. So we'll just let you do that..." He was very excited. He told my mom...I felt so good because he would tell me all these things. He was like "You're doing great." Even for participation...instead of having to work your way up, he was like "We'll work your way down. Everyone starts this with an A. Everyone's perfect here. Everyone's good." In one year I went from being this horribly shy, violent child to being perfect and shocked the hell out of everyone. (Francine)

The importance of encouragement, metaphorically (and sometimes literally) picking up a student who falls and encouraging him or her to keep going could not be stressed too strongly by the students who spoke to me:

There were very few [teachers who worked with what you had]. One was in grade two. He was the best teacher I think I've ever had, I still remember him. He had me in choir, and even though I was tone deaf he said it was okay. He taught me how to snowshoe, and when my snowshoes fell through the snow even though they're not supposed to, he picked me up and carried me back into the class and told me I did a good job. And that it's okay to fall in the snow. And this is the thing, it's the constant encouragement...we'd do a reading time and each of us would read, and if one person stumbled, he'd be like "You know what? It's good that you stumble. If you all read perfectly, my job would really have been taken away." (Jennifer Hogan)

However, in interviews, students explained that it was only the occasional teacher-many students told of one teacher from their entire school career- who believed in them and helped them discover their brilliance. I also heard many stories of teachers (and guidance counsellors) who discouraged students and put them down, sending them repeatedly to the office, limiting their sense of possibility, and contributed to students' anger at a school system which discounted them.