Hello everybody, and welcome back to English With Dylan! You’re listening to Episode 3: School in Canada! I hope you’re having a great day so far! In today’s episode, I’m going to cover the entire Canadian education system, right from preschool all the way up to high school, and a bit of university too! As always, if you haven’t already, you can find the transcript to this episode on my website, www.englishwithdylan.com. 

I myself am in fact having a great day. I spent the last five days in Montréal, Québec, and it was an excellent trip! Those of you that listened to the first episode of this podcast will know that I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. However, you may not know that I’m currently living in Toronto, Ontario, for work. Toronto is geographically much closer to Montréal than Vancouver (a 4.5 hour train ride compared to a 5 hour flight!) and so I wanted to take advantage of the proximity and spend a few days in the city. I had been to Montréal once before, but I was very young so I don’t remember much at all. If you didn’t already know this, French is also an official language here in Canada, and it is primarily spoken in the province of Québec, where an estimated 85% of residents are Francophone. I have a family member that lives in Montréal, and it’s true that that was the main reason why I went to the city. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to use my French! In fact, this trip was my first time being in a Francophone place since I learned French! Previously, I’ve only had the chance to speak French with a few friends and some government agents when I was trying to get a student visa in France. These past five days, however, I got to use it in everyday situations: at restaurants, in stores, etc. I had so much fun! I find it a bit ironic that I’ve already been to Spain twice and Italy once since I learned Spanish and Italian, but never to a Francophone destination even though French was the first foreign language that I learned. 

I’d love to take a moment to talk about a few highlights from my trip to Montréal, related to learning foreign languages. Can you guess how many different languages I spoke while I was in Montréal, from Thursday until Tuesday? If you guessed 6, then you’re right! Yes, over my short stay in Montréal, I had conversations in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German! Let me explain how this is possible. So the opportunity to speak all these languages came from the fact that I met a lot of people while staying in a hostel. And no, that’s not a mistake. A hostel is different from a hotel: in hostels, everyone has their own bed but you typically share a room with around 3-10 people. In addition to the room that you sleep in, most hostels have a common social space for people to gather and get to know each other, and many host events to give travelers a setting to meet and bond with each other. On my last night in Montréal, it was karaoke night, and I had a blast meeting and singing with people from all over the world (by the way, “to have a blast” means to have a lot of fun). Because of the fact that you share the space, hostels are much cheaper than hotels and thus the ideal option for travelers who cannot or don’t want to spend too much money on accommodation! It was my first time ever staying in a hostel, and I must say that it was an incredible experience. It’s true that it can be a little bit inconvenient sharing a space with so many people (waiting for the bathroom, being woken up when your roommates come home in the middle of the night, etc.) but if you are able to look past all of that, what hostels really are is a beautiful opportunity to meet a ton of people from all across the world who all share a common passion for travel, and who are all hoping to make friends during their travels! If this description matches you, I would highly recommend looking into hostels. Maybe, on your next trip, you could try and find the nicest, cleanest, highest rated hostel in the city that you’re going to. You’re sure to save  a lot of money compared to booking a hotel, and hey, you might just make some friends!

So anyways, the fact that I stayed in a hostel was the reason that I spoke 6 languages in 5 days. I met tons of French speakers (from Canada, France, Belgium, Madagascar, and Cameroon), 5 Spanish speakers (from Mexico and Spain), one Italian speaker, two Portuguese speakers (both from Brazil), and I also met one German speaker, and although it’s true that I did speak the bit of German that I could with him (I was able to introduce myself, ask him why he was in Montréal, explain why I was there, ask him what he does for work, and a few other things) I’m still definitely a beginner, so we mostly spoke in English. And of course, I also met people whose languages I don’t know a single word of (from countries such as Japan and Poland), so I used English with them, too. All in all, it was an awesome experience that made me feel all the more thankful for the fact that I’m multilingual, as well as inspired me to continue perfecting my Portuguese and my German.

Hopefully this story has inspired you, too, to continue with your English journey! As I talked about in the first episode, English is one of the most useful languages in the world, especially for travelers

Now, without further ado, let’s dive right into the topic of today’s episode: the Canadian school system.

So I thought this would be an interesting topic to cover for a few reasons. Firstly, the other day I received a message from a fan of the podcast asking me if I recommend coming to Canada to do an exchange year, and I told her that I absolutely do! Vancouver in particular is a very popular destination for exchange students, and for good reason. It is a wonderful place, in my opinion. So anyways, that message made me think that in case anyone else listening to this podcast is considering studying abroad, either in high school or university, it would be a good idea to talk about this system to give you an idea of how it might be to come study here. In addition, talking about the school system exposes you to some important, relatively common vocabulary. 

So let me start right at the very beginning. The first school that myself, along with the vast majority of Canadian children, ever attended was preschool. Preschool is technically optional in my home province of British Columbia, as school actually only becomes legally required at the age of 5, but it is very common and the majority of parents put their kids in some kind of preschool the year that they turn 4. Of course, I don’t remember that much of my preschool days, but what I can tell you is that it was not nearly as much about learning as regular, public school that begins in Kindergarten. That being said, I do remember doing a few activities such as talking about the weather in front of the class. The thing is, due to the fact that preschools aren’t mandatory, they can vary greatly. Some preschools are pretty much just daycare, where parents leave their young children while they have to go to work. Daycare usually consists of a bunch of playtime, some naptime, and perhaps a colouring activity or something along those lines. I know some people, however, who went to super advanced preschools and even started doing things like learning a second language from the age of four years old! Preschools like that usually cost lots of money, though. And I’ll just clarify right now that my entire education, from kindergarten all the way to grade 12, was free. So when I talk about the quality and the circumstances that I was in, keep in mind that I’m speaking about the public school system in British Columbia. 

So, preschool is kind of all over the place, but the school system starts to become more consistent when children reach the age of 5. At 5 years old, the vast majority of children are enrolled in public elementary schools for the first time. By the way, the name of this school varies across different English speaking nations. As far as I know, we almost always refer to Kindergarten to about Grade 7 as “elementary school” in Canada, however in countries like the UK it is usually called “primary school”, just for your information. I absolutely loved my elementary school, and I often go back and visit the teachers that I had during my time there (though a few of them are about to retire, and that makes me feel kind of old!). In Kindergarten is where children really start getting an education. I remember working on things like reading and writing a lot: learning how to write each letter of the alphabet, little writing assignments that talked about our day, simple things like that. In kindergarten, there was also a part of each day that was called “centres”, at least in my class, where we had the option to go around and play at any of the centres in the classroom. My classroom, for example, had a sandbox centre, a shapes centre, a puzzle centre, and a lego centre, among others. In other words, heaven on earth for a bunch of five year olds. Of course, I didn’t know or even think about this at the time, but if I had to guess I would say that the point of this playtime was to teach children how to respectfully share and socialize with each other. Remember, being five years old, we were just entering the world of social interaction. I remember having several disagreements over whose turn it was to play with a certain toy, and looking back on it now, my teacher was very well-equipped to teach us how to deal with these disagreements. In hindsight, Kindergarten is an integral part of a child’s early education, because social interaction is obviously a required skill for children as well as adults! 

After Kindergarten comes the rest of elementary school, typically going from grades 1 to 7, or ages 6 to 12, roughly. I don’t think elementary school changes that much from country to country. I mean I’m sure there are countries in which the elementary education is more advanced than Canada’s, but the opposite is also definitely true. As you might expect, over the 7 years that  were grades 1 to 7, I went from learning addition and subtraction, through to division and multiplication, and eventually covering things like fractions and slightly more “advanced” topics by grades 6 and 7. I think one thing that’s unique about school in Canada which has become more and more prevalent every year is our education about the indigenous population in our country. As far as I remember, we started really learning about the history of Canada around the fifth grade, and with this came our introduction to the history of the indigenous Canadians. It should be noted that when my parents were in elementary school, around the 1970s and 80s, indigenous history wasn’t taught at all. The reason for this is likely that, unfortunately, the treatment of Canada’s indigenous population is an extremely dark and tragic part of our history as a country. Thankfully, in recent years, more and more efforts for awareness and education have been made, and that is why my generation did learn so much about them, all the way up until the end of our public education. This may vary from school to school, but I’m pretty sure that most elementary schools in Canada provide sporting opportunities for students. My school’s team sports started in grade 5, with teams for sports such as volleyball, badminton, and basketball, as well as individual track and field events such as cross country running, sprints, high jump, long jump, shot put, and a few others. Also in the 5th grade, at the age of 10, all public elementary school students in British Columbia started learning French, and had the option to do French immersion for the remainder of their elementary school education, where French would play a big part in the day to day class. I didn’t do French immersion (at 10 years old I had zero interest in foreign languages), but I did have a French class every day from grade 5 to 7 that introduced us to the most basic parts of the French language. I don’t want to confuse you though: we hardly learned a thing. In a lot of countries, studying a language for a few years might mean that the child is well on their way to speaking the language at a solid intermediate level. Not in British Columbia public schools, though. To be honest, I don’t think that public school French classes are designed to actually teach you to speak French well, because the truth is that it simply is not possible to become fluent or even intermediate in a language by just taking classes at public school in Canada. The thing is, we were not given enough exposure to the French language to do things like string together sentences, and so I would say that no real learning actually took place, it felt more just like a weird, foreign activity every day. And the sad thing is that even the majority of students who take French right up until grade 12 aren’t very capable of speaking by the end of their education. Languages are simply not given much importance, neither in the elementary or secondary education of Canadian youth. I, for one, think that this needs to change! Anyways, elementary school in Canada is pretty cut and dry, that is to say, it’s relatively simple and exactly what one would assume an elementary school would be like. By the end of grade 7, students begin preparing for high school (or secondary school, the terms are used interchangeably) by being introduced to things like essays, research assignments, etc. In grade 7, the subjects that I studied every day that year were English (things such as reading, creative and formal writing), French, Social Studies (where we learned about things like history and the political system in Canada), Science (mostly focused on biology, learning about the human body and plant life), physical education (which was just sports), and math. Every day, we also had two breaks: recess at around 10 AM which was just a 15 minute period to play outside with friends and eat a snack, and then lunch at around 12 noon which consisted of approximately 40 minutes of outside time, then 20 minutes to eat. Another cool feature of grade 7 was the buddy system, where our class was paired up with a grade 1 class and each of us were assigned a “buddy”, in other words, a grade 1 student who we would meet with once or twice a week and work on an assignment together. We were told time and time again that being a big buddy was a real responsibility, and it was! At the end of the day, It was up to us to be good role models for our grade 1 counterparts. At 6 years old, children are so impressionable, and so it was important for us to act right around our little buddies. I remember that if we ever acted out of line (in other words, misbehaved), our teachers would get very frustrated with us, much more than if we were to do so in the privacy of our own class. I think giving 12 year olds the role of big buddy is a great lesson in responsibility. I will always remember being a big buddy and the way that it made me feel. It was the first time in my life where I felt that I had an important role to play in the life of someone else, and I think that this is an absolutely fantastic feeling to introduce into a kid’s life at an early age. I think that for those of us who took it seriously (and I assure you, there were many students who didn’t) being a big buddy played a vital role in our process of maturing and understanding what it means to be responsible for someone or for something. 

Overall, I loved elementary school with all my heart. There were times that I didn’t like going to school, though. 2nd grade was a particularly difficult year for me, I remember being picked up by my mom several times because I was crying so much in class! My mom, bless her heart, would usually take me to McDonald’s, get me a cheeseburger and fries, and let me explain to her why I was so sad. I think teacher in 2nd grade was a lovely lady, but she was a lot more strict and old-fashioned than the teachers I’d had before. I would describe my Kindergarten and Grade 1 teachers as rays of sunshine, whereas my grade 2 teacher seemed a lot more disciplined and severe. In reality, she was a very sweet lady too: just, you know, a normal, kind and respectful teacher. My parents loved her, and she also loved me. But she was the first teacher who would actually get mad at us if we misbehaved, and if we were particularly disrespectful, I remember her voice could become quite loud and her tone rather severe. We deserved it sometimes! But being a very emotionally sensitive child, it would often make me cry when people raised their voices at or around me, whether it was my teacher or my parents. Other than the first half of second grade, though, elementary school was a wonderful place, and I am forever thankful to all the hardworking and beautiful people who dedicated their lives to being a part of this extremely formative time of childhood. I would like to specifically say something about Mr. Joel Johnson, the second of two principals that I had during my time at elementary school (the principal is the head of the school, they don’t teach any classes but instead do things like lead school-wide events and ensure the smooth day-to-day operation of the school). Mr. Johnson was a kind man and a calm presence in all of our lives at school. I had the fortune of working closely with him on a couple projects, such as writing for the school website, and I remember feeling incredibly proud that he chose me to work with him. Being chosen by the principal was a top honour in elementary school, and I remember being determined to make him proud. I sure hope that I did. Sadly, Mr. Johnson passed away a couple years after I entered high school. The news hit me like a ton of bricks, and I spent the afternoon that I found out about his death back at my elementary school, visiting with my teachers and reminiscing about how lovely of a person he was. Mr. Johnson, I think about you from time to time, just as I think about all of my elementary school teachers! Thank you for everything! 

After elementary school comes high school! I will note that some places in Canada have a “middle school”, which typically lasts for grades 6, 7, and 8, but in the case of myself and all of my friends, high school started in grade 8, directly after elementary school. Suddenly, I was a thirteen year old walking around in the same hallways as grade 12 students, who are pretty much full grown adults compared to myself. I personally entered high school really small. At 13 years old, I stood at 5’1” (156 cm) and weighed 100 pounds (just 45 kg). By the end of high school, though, I had grown up a bit to just barely 5’10” (178 cm) and 150 pounds (68 kg). Nowadays, for reference, I stand at 179 cm and weigh 160 pounds (72 kg) and I’m pretty sure I’m finished growing, at least in terms of height! So anyways, as you can tell, high school was 5 years of incredible change for, as it was for everyone. But let’s take a deeper dive into the school system that accompanied this change. 

I think high school is a lot more interesting to talk about than elementary school because there are a lot more variables. Even within my city, the structure of public high school varies from school to school, so you can be sure that it changes across provinces too! The general structure of a day at my school was four classes of 1 hour and 20 minutes per day, with a forty minute lunch break in between the second and third classes (or, as they are often called, the second and third blocks/periods). My school year was divided into two semesters, with the first one running from the beginning of September until the end of January, and the second from the start of February to the end of the school year (typically around June 21, give or take a few days depending on the year). This meant that I was lucky enough to only ever have four classes at one time during my high school experience, and that is something that makes a lot of my foreign friends jealous! 

And this is a message for all listeners who are in high school and considering doing an exchange year: I can almost guarantee you that Canadian school will be easier than wherever you come from. And I can absolutely guarantee that if you are German, Spanish, Italian, or Brazilian, the amount of work and studying that you’d have to do in Canada would seem incredibly light, compared to your schools at home (I know this because I have friends from all those countries who have told me so). My advice to you would be to try and find a high school in Metro Vancouver that works on a semester system similar to my former school, in which you would only have four classes at a time. This would leave you much more time to enjoy yourself, to relax and to do activities like going to the beach on warm days, skiing at one of the several mountains close to the city in the winter season, and also to simply go out with friends and see what Vancouver has to offer. I haven’t met a single exchange student in Vancouver who didn’t enjoy their time in the city, and several of them have told me that it had a lot to do with how much free time they had to explore. 

In high school, French was only mandatory for us until grade 9, at which point we could choose to switch to Spanish. It was never technically required to take a second language, but a huge portion of Canadian universities list a second language until grade 11 as one of their requirements, so the majority of us did. I took French all the way through to grade 12 (by which point I actually spoke it quite fluently), and I also added Spanish in grade 12 (which I also spoke quite fluently – those classes were a lot of fun for me!). Now, for no fault of the teachers, as I said earlier the education we receive in school is not sufficient to achieve fluency in a language. But I stress that this is not the teacher’s fault, because I had several excellent French teachers throughout my five years. It’s simply due to the curriculum that the teachers had to follow, and the very small amount of exposure that we actually got to the language as a whole. For the system to really improve, my whole high school structure would have had to change. For starters, while it’s true that we had French for 1 hour and 20 minutes a day, that was only for half the year. For the other semester, French was out of sight and out of mind. I think that students who had French class in the linear system (in which one has all 8 classes at the same time, but with Day 1 being one group of 4 classes, and Day 2 being the other four classes, switching from Day 1 to 2 each day) would be a lot more likely to retain their French, as it was part of their learning for the whole year. Furthermore, the classes would simply need to get harder in order for students to learn more. I recently helped an Italian friend of mine with a French assignment, and suffice it to say that it was a lot more difficult than anything I ever had to do in high school. 

Apart from languages, my high school provided a lot of opportunities to take some interesting classes, ranging anywhere from physics to calculus to photography to sewing to psychology and beyond. In addition, we had quite a strong performing arts program. I personally took part in choir from grade 9 through to grade 12. In addition to taking it as one of my classes, I also joined our more competitive after school choir for grades 10 to 12, and I loved it. We were lucky enough to have an amazing, knowledgeable, entertaining teacher. In fact, Mr. Krueger was the main reason why I even joined the choir. Before I got to high school, I had no interest in anything musical, ESPECIALLY singing. But I just liked him and his class so much that I decided to give it a shot, and it turned out to be one of the best things I did in all of high school. 

In terms of grades, exams, and graduation, I feel that Canadian students have it pretty easy compared to a lot of other countries in the world. In all of high school, I only had to write four really big exams: a numeracy and literacy exam in the 10th and 12th grade. Of course, all of our individual classes had tests and exams throughout the year, but we really only had to do those four exams to graduate and head off to University. This is in stark contrast to Italian students, for example, who are required to write a different exam for each university they wish to apply to, as far as I know. Nothing like that exists in Canada. Contrary to the United States, our universities have no requirements or expectations when it comes to standardized tests, such as the SAT. To have a chance at the top universities in Canada, you really just need to do your best to get top grades, be a part of extracurricular activities (both inside of school, such as my choir, and outside of school, such as my acting or hockey) and write a great application essay. It’s as simple as that!

That’s not to say that Canadian universities aren’t prestigious, not at all! The University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia are probably our most internationally well-known universities in general, with fantastic reputations in subjects ranging from medicine all the way to business studies. But Canada offers dozens of other top level, reputable schools that would look great on your resume both within Canada and abroad, if you were considering coming here for university! Now, I can’t give the same level of detail when describing the university structure, as I’ve never been, but what I can talk about is the basic structure of higher education in Canada, just to give you a general idea. So, students that go to university right out of high school generally go into what’s called their undergraduate degree, which typically takes four years. Most degrees are identified with an overarching, general subject. The most common are “arts” and “science”. So, for example: “after four years at the University of British Columbia, Dylan received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology!” Then, after this undergraduate degree, depending on the field, students will either go right into searching for a job and getting their career started or pursue higher education. After the undergraduate degree, the next level in Canada is called a Master’s degree. Again, master’s degrees can either be MA (Master of Arts) or MS (Master of Science) and this will typically be the same as the bachelor’s. So my next step in this hypothetical situation would be a “Master of Arts in Psychology”. Master’s programs typically take between 1-3 years to complete. Finally, for those who wish to achieve the highest level of education, the last option is to pursue a Ph.D. Upon completing a Ph.D, you are referred to as “Doctor” (even if your field of study has nothing to do with medicine) and you are considered capable of making important contributions to your field as a whole. Typically, people who pursue Ph.D’s are pursuing careers in academia: most end up spending their careers as professors and/or researchers in their field, simultaneously educating the next generation and making an impact in the field. This would usually be referred to like so: “Dylan received his Ph.D (or simply, his doctorate) in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh. 

So there you have it! I hope that you have found this third episode of English With Dylan interesting and informative, and if so, please remember to let me know in the comments on my instagram, as well as by leaving a rating if you’re listening on Spotify! Five stars is preferable; the more five star ratings, the more people are likely to discover this podcast. But hey, whatever rating you leave, I just ask that you be honest and that if you have ideas for how I could improve the podcast, remember that my messages are always open on @engliswithdylanpod! 

I hope you have a great week, and until next time!