Getting Schooled Canadian Style

It's a Sunday morning in mid-September. The weather is so grand that even though it's morning, the windows and doors are open and the husband, cats and I take our breakfast on the balcony. Two Canadian flags wave gently on this rare day without high winds. I take this moment to soak in the quiet and the sun. For the first time in weeks I feel refreshed.

School started two weeks ago, and I'm in the throes of navigating a new school. This year there's the added bonus of learning the secret inner workings of the Canadian educational system.. How different can it be, you ask? On the surface, it looks like any other high school, terrified and underdeveloped freshmen (oh, and they don't call them freshmen--they're grade 9's) staring frantically at their schedules in overcrowded halls. Couples groping each other in dark corners. The loud hum of laughter and talk, the click of chalk on a chalkboard.

The differences are subtle. I began the first day of school, as I always do, talking through the syllabus, explaining the in's and out's of surviving my class. Mid-way through, a tiny boy in the back raises his hand and asks, "What are points? Is that like marks?" Oh dear, I think. I've got to master this Canadian vernacular. Evidently "marks" are the same as points, but they are also "grades." No one says grades around here. Teachers spend the weekend "marking," and mid-term "marks" are due in October. I'm an old dog, and this is a new trick, but I'm working on it. I still say "points," but bless their hearts, they usually don't say a word.

In about hour eleven of one of my many twelve hour days these last two weeks, I make another startling discovery. In an attempt to discern exactly where my students are in terms of skills and abilities, something I always do at the beginning of the year, I'm researching students' previous English grades. To my great surprise and alarm, I find the majority of my students have been earning grades in the 50th and 60th percent range since middle school. I'll confess that my first assumption was that Canadians were just as relaxed about their educational standards as they were about everything else, but really? I shared this with my husband, and we both shook our heads at what seemed a blatant example of social promotion gone wild.

I'm an ignorant American. I'll just admit that now. Turns out the Canadian grading system is COMPLETELY different from the American system. A fifty percent in a course is passing. Really, it's the equivalent of a C-. Sixty percent--a respectable C. When I was corrected by an empathetic coworker, she politely told me, "Canadians don't have those inflated grades like they do in the States." You go passing out eighty percents around here, and it's DISASTER." DISASTER?
Point taken. This was the first of many moments as the American outsider.

The first back-to-school assembly brought another such outsider moment as the packed gymnasium stood for the Canadian national anthem. The room literally reverberated with voices in absolute harmony as they passionately joined in "O' Canada." Lining the walls were vibrant flags of the provinces flanking the red maple leaf. I've rarely felt more moved. Canadians love their country. It permeates everything.

Even though my (sometimes painful, always awkward and interesting) assimilation into the Canadian educational system continues, I also feel very much at home. Canadians are nothing if not welcoming and polite. Even my misbehaviors in class do so in an ever-so-slightly less offensive way. My grade 11 students, a rather cynical and snarky bunch, are unfailingly sweet. "She can call us Seniors if she wants to. Shut up!" one of them announces. "You guys know what she means by 'points.' It's not a big deal what she calls them," another one defends. After yanking a pair of boys into the hallway after asking them to quiet down and listen for the fifth time, I start to launch into a lecture about their wrongdoings when one interrupted me: "We need to just shut our traps, hey?" "No worries," the other one assures. O' Canada.

The polite and welcoming Canadians aren't above a little rib-poking when it comes to my home country, though. When a guest speaker from California began his motivational address during our back-to-school assembly, he joked that he was an American like none they'd ever met or would ever meet again. "I know you aren't going to believe this," he said, "but I don't know everything." The crowd of teachers clapped and erupted in laughter.

My neighboring teacher tells me her kids always ask who that new teacher is next door who they can hear through the thick walls. "Oh, she's an American," she tells them, and I imagine them all nodding.

It's okay. I feel it's almost my duty to endure the ribbing for my fellow ethnocentric countrymen. We sort of deserve it.