Today's writing is about school but, as you know, I don't like to explain all my days and I can tell how boring it will be, for you, to read and entire text about what I do between 9 and 10am. Therefore I am going to explain some parts of my days but not only focused on that and try to compare Canadian's schools and french's schools, something more interesting. I will also, give my honest opinion about schools.
Firstly, I am attending IE Weldon public high school of 2000 students in Kawartha Lakes. This school, to me, is really huge compared to mine, in France, where only 700 people study. The hallways look really alike those we see in movies and series with the yellow lockers and the people talking next to one of them. In France, we are used to having our square lockers in our classrooms. This is pretty easy to know more about that difference. In fact, in Canada, we attend classes between 8am to 2pm, and at each end of course, we have to move to another class for the next one. Things that we don't really do in French High school even though, the school reform just appeared and now we have to move more.
At lunch break, we dispose of one hour to eat. Time during which we, my friends and I, spend to talk about diverse things such as what we did during the weekend, movies we watched, books we read and what we volunteered for. The main distinction with France is that we have the choice to bring our lunch at school or, to buy, everyday, your food at the cafeteria. Only for a small amount of pasta, you have to pay 4 bucks, way too expensive. In France for the same price you have an entree, the meal, dessert and bread. Also, we paid at the beginning of the years our lunch for the year, the semester or trimester.
We had to choose 4 subjects to learn for the semester per grade among a diversity of those. Subjects we don't even have in France and I was really confused when someone asks me what I wanted to study here. At the end, I chose to take History, Family studies, English and Food/nutritional. In history, we learn about Europe before the first World war, with the many revolutions that occurred during this time. I really do love history with my whole heart and the teacher is so good at explaining. I don't have to spend too much time to learn at home since I memorize more than a half in class thanks to him.
Cooking is not a common subject to me but I learned and I continue to learn so mNY things. All the vocabulary of the cooking tools, different ways to cook, different ways to prepare something. Sometimes we cook. I already cook muffins and 2 cookies types. Now, I can't pretend that I don't know how to cook. My classmates are nice and we have a real team spirit. Sometimes, they will talk about their love life with the teacher. I really love how open minded this teacher is. I've got the school's sweatshirt thanks to her.
Family studies is really one of the strangest subject ever but I'm not complaining since it's really passionate. We talk and work about mental health in teenagers, what are the causes and the issues. Recently, we started to analyze texts about loneliness. I learned a lot since the end of the summer break and the teacher wants us, the students, to be happy, to live our lives in a healthy way and to think of stress in a positive way. She gave us a diary, to daily write and express how we feel, our emotions, our problems. Mine is also a cool way to write things that I learned in English and easily memorize new vocabulary. It feels great to write about our issues, it makes you think that you're are writing to a good old friend. It makes you think about how you can resolve it and just empty yourself about what happened in your head. It's just funny the way we learn about mental issues and how to act with these people when some in the same class are bullying people, shaming teenagers, mocking mental health and pretend not to see how sad and depressed these people are. Attack people behind their back is the weakest behavior a human can have. Instead of being this mean, why don't people try their best to be kind with each other and bring happiness to whoever you want? It really goes a long way. It needs to stop.
Also, we sewed some animals with socks to give to children in hospital.
I have the same teacher in English class and we work ourselves on a book. I chose "Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl" . It's a book I already read a few times in French but I thought It will be easier for me to understand some part if I already knew the story.
The teachers are really the nice type. It amazed me how the students are really close to the teachers. In France you will never saw this kind of relation. School is not as academic as we used to know so that's why, I think, the teacher are less strict and more friendly with their students. One day, I lost my phone charger on my way to school and I was really mad at myself because of that. I told my history teacher, and he just gave me a new one? I couldn't believe what had happened and I was so thankful and I still am. The same teacher gave us, in the morning, to the students from abroad, cup noodles. Best moment of my life ever.
I feel like Canadian's Schools give much more freedom to their students. The rules are less strict, especially about the way to dress. I was surprised to see some girls going to school with crop tops or mini shorts. This is really cool, we should be able to wear what we want to wear, in clothes which are making us feel happy and confident in ourselves, especially for girls who are always victim from sexism. And the fact that sometimes, in France, a teacher will tell you that your outfit reveals too much just because you wear a skirt is so weird, pure sexism because a boy will never have this kind of reflections.
I think that I don't really love the school system. They only have 4 subjects per day and finish school every afternoon at 2pm seems so fun but I think is not. I mean, the students I met are complaining that they don't have time to do a paragraph for the next day with so less time. They literally have a lot of time left to do it and they don't seem to know how lucky they are. It's sad to see that, how are they going to do when they will get a job and won't be able to work after 2pm. Also, some subjects are not really useful for university. A lot of people in my classes want to become surgeons but, how can cooking or history help you? To me, this is a huge mess and it can't really helps teenagers.
My sweatshirt from my school; the cat I saw; random locker.
Thanks for reading.