school in canada 🇨🇦

hi charlie!  I got back from Canada a few weeks ago, and I wanted to talk to you about this country, that I learned so much about during these 5 weeks. I will mainly be talking about school, which is totally different comparing to the french school system. 

First, in canada, it’s like the united states : high school starts a year before us : high school is from 9th grade to 12th, so it’s the equivalent of starting high school in 3e. in contrary to France, even if you’re in grade 10 ( which is 2nde ) you can choose grade 11 classes, if you have a high level, and grade 10 classes aren’t adapted to your level. 

The year is divided in semester, and you get to choose 4 classes per semester, but you can’t take the same classes the whole year. the classes are the same everyday, but the order changes depending of the day : each day is a day 1 or a day two, and the order of the classes changed depending of the day, which means that if on a day one you start by a class « a » and then a class « b », on a day two you’ll start by class « b » and then class « a ». 

But otherwise, the timetable is the same everyday : school starts at 9 and ends at 3, because each class is an 1h15, and much time is about 40 minutes long. 

concerning the classes, you get to choose each of them at the beginning of the year. 

There are much more choices than in France : there, you can choose some more « artistic » classes, like visual arts, drama, architecture or even woodworking! there’s also cooking class, where you get to learn about nutrition, and cook or bake things like cookies, cinnamon rolls… 

A lot of the activities are organised at school : for exemple, in my school on friday, there were games that were organised, and each day during lunch you could go play sports. For the week of halloween, the school organised the « spirit week » where each day you had to dress according to a specific theme : halloween costume, monochrome colors…

The school also organised special events like « homecoming », and for halloween, they created a labyrinth. 

As an exchange student my experience was a bit different, but I got to do some great things, and I was very impressed by the school itself : it really looked like all the cliches that I’d heard about (the lockers, the yellow school bus, and even the students there), and it was really fun to see.

I didn’t get to choose my classes, but I got english, fitness, biology and drama. 

As someone from france I was really impressed, because the canadian system is less strict than the french one : you can use your phone as much as you want, and if you miss a day of school it’s not a big deal for them as long as you have good grades. During class if you’re hungry, you can go get food from vending machines in the school, and eat in class. Classes in general are much more easier, as an oib student, our english lessons are way harder than theirs. 

As a whole, i really enjoyed my experience in canada, and even if in this article I focused more on school, there was so many other things that I discovered : i got to visit other cities, like toronto or montreal, and see some amazing landscapes : in autumn, the trees there are really beautiful, and there are a lot of beautiful colors everywhere!