So as you probably know, most of the premières this year went to Canada for 2 weeks, but it wasn't only tourism and eating poutine. We actually had to go to school!
Well actually it wasn't that terrible honestly, we had the opportunity to discover a completely different system from ours. So here I'll speak for (probably) more than my own experience at the Secondary School Colonel By.
So! We were all assigned to different schools but most of us were at Colonel By Secondary School. Here is a quick view of the place:
By the way, this is the logo of the cougars, the sports teams were all named this way. So as you can see the school was quite beautiful, a lot of nature, and the inside was even more beautiful: students (from what I remember) painted different walls with beautiful paintings, I mean look at this, it looks almost unreal!
But the school is not only about art, it holds since 2008 (if I remember well) the title of best seconday school in Ontario. But if some could see it as a good thing, honestly it was one of the main bad points: the competition. At first when my pen pal told me that there was a lot of competition I thought it was just a joke or something that was exagerated; boy was I wrong. So this applies probably only to me, but the atmosphere I felt was too stressful, people seemed under pressure. But aside from that, the school was really good, the teachers were awesome (special thanks to my science teacher there, Mrs Pall (I think this is how you write it) who was just incredible), the cafeteria is 1000 times better than the one here, no offense but the cookies were twice as cheap, twice as big (no joke), and twice as good.
Also, I think this is important to mention that aside from that, it almost felt like in the movies, lots of clubs, athletics, etc... and this has an explanation: In fact they have a certain amount of mandatory courses (in English, in Math, etc...) but then they are free to take whatever courses they want and to participate in different clubs or athletics (well this is mandatory). So during the day we could see American football players going around, tennis players, hockey players, etc... And talking about those "extra courses", I wasn't expecting such a big diversity. For example they had a course named "World Religion", but they also had Tech courses (where they did some works on Photoshop). If we continue on the education side, something actually struck me: even though I was in grade 10 (so the equivalent of Seconde here), they were doing sciences that I do at my level, but everything else (English) included seemed easier. But Mrs. Choffrut thought that the IB literature courses of the seniors were actually closer from what we do in the OIB.
But let's stop throwing roses at ourselves for a second. To conclude, I would say that colonel By was really an interesting experience, and even if I'm glad I'm studying in France, I had the opportunity to discover a complete different education system, so totally worth it. And I think we should take some lessons from them, for example the community activies and work was so divisified compared to ehre, they even had a TV club (named "Cougar Vision") that wrote, filmed and broadcasted an emission for the whole day!
That's all for me, take care Charlie!
Kellian (and the other students that went to Colonel By).
For being at Colonel by during my stay in Canada, I indeed felt the impact of the competitive side of the students, the school having a reputation to have the best students. My penpal had almost as much homework as we do with the oib which is a lot for a Canadian student I want to say. But I didn't really feel any pressure because everyone were very nice and welcoming to me, and the level was not really hard, I had a lot of fun in French classes as you could imagine... Thanks for sharing !
ReplyDeleteGlad I wasn't the only one who felt that... Perhaps it was just Moiz who was trying too hard, who knows. But that's true, they were really welcoming.
DeleteStrangely, the French classes were a lot of fun, watching them learning our language has something pleasant to be honnest... If only there weren't big mistakes on the posters (like the "white part on the French flag is for Mary", I almost spilled my tea in a very ungentlemenly manner).
twice as good ? No I'm sorry, they were the best cookies of my life. So more than twice as good x)
ReplyDeleteAlso I must say that I completely disagree about the competition, I didn't see it in my penpal who still had very high goals... I guess there are many different approaches to it.
Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt the pressure thing. But you're right, those cookies were delicious.
DeleteWow, it seems to be totally different from our highschool! It must be so interesting to have the opportunity to compare two different systems. Your feeling that competion was particulary present in that school is pretty interesting given that we live in one of the most competitive country! Thank you for your article!
ReplyDelete