For the two last school years,  Isaac, a 15 years old  had the chance to go to  Spokane, WA , to study.

Over his stay he  noticed there were  a lot of differences between the Quebec school system and an american high school talking the school environments. He had the opportunity to live with relatives of his mom and became attached to them.

First of all, his school was divided into colored halls yellow, blue, and red. The halls are were made according to student’s stage of learning example: Advanced kids who have advanced math, science, and others. They are in the blue hall. There are also the kids in the  yellow hall who are most of them immigrants which he was part of,  a big part of them are kids that came to the States for a better education, escaping from wars, bad life conditions, in other words they are refugees. We can see Marshallese, Africans, Asians,…They are in learning English classes that taught them how to count in English, the alphabet, and how to formulate sentences.

According to Isaac, Education is different in the states. School started at 9 am and finished at 3:30pm. Students in his school use more dirty language and there are  more trouble makers, and there were lot of kids doing stupid stuff. Some were getting suspended or even expelled  for having cannabis in their lockers or backpacks. Surprisingly, there were rarely fights.

There are more sports than here in La Camaradière. They have cross country, girls softball, cheerleading, volleyball, wrestling, basketball, baseball, and track. To play sports you had to get checked all the parts of your body by a doctor to see if you don’t have any problems that could stop you from doing sports, so you have to get naked in front of the doctor embarassing huh ! At the academic level in his opinion his american school took more attention on the academics success and attendance of the students. Example his old school gave cards to students who had a fair attendance. And who had B’s or better.The cards were called V.I.P cards and students who had this were called V.I.P’s and they had the privilege to go on field trip organized by the school for them only,they had special snacks, and they had also the privilege to go grab lunch first.There were four levels of cards bronze,silver,gold, and platinum and each cards had their privileges. This project motivated students to get good grades.

During his trip he saw a lot of homeless people who were demanding for money. Isaac would sometimes give to homeless.In 2016 there were an estimated amount  of 564,708  homeless people in america. Compared to 235,000 in Canada  annually.

Although homelessness is a big problem it is not the only one. Last year in 2016, there were 15,049 of deaths due to gun shooting. It’s not uncommon to   know a guy that his dad was shot in the leg. Gun firing has been a great issues in america for the past few years and is still one.

Finally Isaac liked his sojourn to america and all the great moments that he had there. And he really loved the time passed with his mom’s friend.

written by:Gabriel Mwenda

edited by:Jean-Maxime Boudreau,Pier-yves Cardinal