Looks deceive

Phi Delta Kappan, June, 2009

If you somehow managed to miss Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent in April, pause now and check the YouTube video today.

Take a Kleenex with you when you do.

Susan Boyle is the frumpy, 47-year-old Scottish spinster who entered herself into the auditions for the British equivalent of American Idol.

As soon as this overweight woman with the frizzy hair walked onto the stage, the audience began to titter. Then, they roared with laughter when she declared that she dreamed of being a professional singer like Elaine Paige, one of the great voices of musical theatre. How dare a woman who looks like Susan Boyle dream a dream like that!

And then she opened her mouth and the laughter stopped. A few bars into "I Dream a Dream" from Les Miserables, the audience knew they were hearing something rare, a truly gifted singer who needed no hype, no glitz to deliver a powerful performance. The three judges sat there looking bewitched.

Remind you of anything about schools?

Think of children who have been underestimated by their teachers in the same way that Susan Boyle was underestimated by her audience. Children who look a bit dirtier or smell more than other students. Children who stumble through English each morning because they have heard and spoken another language since the end of school the day before. Children who are a little too restless and act up a little too much. Children whose skin and hair is different from the teacher's.

Back in the late 1970s, Ron Edmonds suggested that effective schools shared common characteristics, among them holding high expectations for student learning. No one has been able to demonstrate that holding high expectations ensures student success, but there has been ample evidence that holding low expectations impedes student learning. That's why so much of the diversity work begins with examining teachers' personal attitudes and beliefs about race and poverty. Teachers short-circuit the learning process anytime they anticipate a poor outcome.

The same day I watched Susan Boyle on YouTube, I also happened to listen to Martin Haberman talk about teachers' power to transform students. "If you believe it's a matter of life or death, it changes everything you do," he said.

Haberman's right, of course. Great teachers live in a world of vision. They are able to envision in their students what others cannot see. Because they can see greatness in their students, they are able to build greatness into their students.

He's also right that holding such beliefs is a matter of life or death. Without a high-quality education, most of us, especially those who begin their lives in poverty, will be doomed.

I suggest you play the Susan Boyle YouTube video when school opens next year and encourage teachers and principals to consider that example the next time they encounter a kid who doesn't look as if he or she should be a great student. My hope is that Boyle's enduring lesson for us is that we will all do our best to ensure that no child has to utter the last line from her song, "My life has killed the dream I dreamed."