This year’s competition was fiercer than ever, since the new grade 10 students brought renewed energy to every team. The whole activity began with the male & female 100-meter dash. Grade 12’s Lola and George from the yellow and orange teams were the winners. “It was hard for me to win first place because other girls are also skilled at running, especially Sharon and Faye. I need to put more effort on training after this,” Lola said. George also agreed with her: “All the boys are strong and powerful.”

After the 100-meter race was the female 4 X 100-meter relay race. First place went to the red team. The pink team followed them in a close second place. This race depended more on the cooperation between teammates than athletes’ speed. During the competition, more than one team made mistakes like dropping the relay baton, so they couldn’t earn a fast time in this event.

The final race was the men’s 1500m race and Mr. Berg also competed with us. In the beginning, all of the students believed that he would be the winner without any question. However, to our surprise, grade 12’s Jerry Li got a similar time as Mr. Berg. “This year, I practiced a lot on my running skills, so I think that’s why I had a similar score as Mr. Berg and beat all other students,” Jerry Li laughed. “By the way, I’ve been the winner of this event for 3 years in a row. I hoped someone could exceed me.”

Other than different kinds of races, there is also the shot put and high jump events. Grade 12’s George and Shining were the winners of the male / female shot put event and grade 11’s Jerry Gong and James were the first and second place winner in the high jump event.

Although this year’s “Track and Field” was a big success, some students still gave me some advice and wished it could be changed next year. Most of the students agreed that it’s cool to see everyone join this activity. But still, a small group of people who are weak or poor at athletics cannot have fun during the activity. Grade 11’s Sherry suggested: “The student council needs to think of more than one type of event so that all the students can choose what they like, such as skip the rope.”

Grade 10’s Nancy thought that there should be more group events to let students play together “because it’s hard to see everyone doing sports together during the school day,” Lola said. What’s more, Grade 12’s Jomcy believes that if students are forced to sign up before the activity, then less time would be wasted. “The student council needs to organize and push students well,” she said.

In conclusion, although the “Track and Field” event is over, most students gained happiness and made new friends in different grades and everyone was running and playing on the playground, enjoying the start of summer

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Once, during social study class, Mr. Milne asked a difficult question. The whole class was quiet. I could barely understand what Mr. Milne had asked, but I saw Linda raise her hand and answer the question. “Perfect!” said Mr. Milne. At that time, I realized that Linda deserves to be a star student. Not only is Linda clever, but she’s also kind and warm-hearted.

I asked Linda some questions. She loves reading history books in her spare time. So she is good at both Chinese history and Canadian history. She can fluently recite a number of Chinese historical events in a short time. She also reads some current news about sports. I think that’s cool because less and less girls like sports nowadays.

Through the interview, I also learned that Linda is a caring person. Her dream job is to be a teacher because she believes that education is the beginning of everything. Teaching someone with a desire to enrich his or her mind is a holy thing. It’s a kind of inheritance. She has decided to choose a major related to education in the future so that she can reach her goal more easily.

The reason that Linda chose the BC program in Luwan High School is that she doesn’t want to compete so intensely with other students like in the Chinese program. She loves the feeling of freedom. She likes traveling and she wants to experience different cultures and costumes when she studies in a foreign country.

Linda also has ambition. Linda’s final goal is to enter the University of Toronto. She hopes her average score can be above 90%. Her clear goal for the future will certainly help her on the way. When I asked Linda how she improves her English, she told me that she likes reading English historical stories when she is free. If she still has some time after that, she watches some science fiction films, not only for fun, but also to learn new words and improve her pronunciation.

Furthermore, Linda said: “I am also interested in music. I like listening to a lot of types of music, such as soft music, classical music and so on… Soft music can make me calm down. So if I want to concentrate, I listen to soft music. I have a strong interest is classical music and I want to learn a musical instrument in the future. By the way, my favourite singer is Taylor Swift. I love her songs. They can remind me of a beautiful view in the countryside.”

Through the interview, I found that Linda is indeed a clever, kind, warm-hearted and hard-working student.

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If you are a sneaker enthusiast, you definitely know what “flight club” is, the world’s number one sneaker marketplace. However, it might confuse you to hear that there is a flight club in Luwan High School’s BC program. “Flight club” is actually a sneaker customization club founded by Jerry from grade 12 and several grade 10 students who are keen on vogue items and art design. What’s more, sneakers are no longer only the privilege of boys, girls are also interested in it. Sneaker customization isn’t exactly a new thing, but it has for sure become more prevalent in recent years. In a nutshell, it is just adding colors and patterns to the shoes using brushes, airbrushes, and dyes. Sometimes enthusiasts will change the shape and materials as well.

Jerry is a typical sneakerhead who enjoys collecting a wide variety of shoes, but he grew unsatisfied with owning rare sneakers. Therefore, he started to look for ways to show his individuality. During last winter vacation, a youtube video about sneaker customization intrigued Jerry to learn how to customize a pair of sneakers. George from grade 10 was impressed by Jerry’s work, so they established the club to achieve the same goal, to make their own unique sneakers and have fun. For this purpose, the door is open at any time and for everyone. Now more and more students are attracted to join the club, and other students really enjoy staying in the room to watch club members make shoes during lunch break. People share their opinions and creative ideas freely in the club, talking about art, design, and fashion garments.

As one of the initial members, Andrew draws inspiration from his favorite soccer team, Shanghai ShenHua, and paints his sneakers mainly in ShenHua blue and white with their distinctive badge. Bill said he’s really pleased to assist Andrew in creating his fancy sneakers. Recently, George has finished a pair of sneakers which is a collaboration between Nike Air Force 1 and high street brand Off-White. One of our teachers, Mr. Chang, has also been engaged by the club. Mr. Chang and Jerry are painting shoes in the color of Mr. Chang’s most-loved drink—Apple Cider. Every member is learning quickly, thus club members have decided to take a few orders online to sell their custom-made shoes. This experiment in entrepreneurship will begin after practicing for a few more months so that students can gain more experience and apply their knowledge to real life. I hope you will like this flight club, and be part of it!

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When it comes to the Olympics, what do you think of first? Your country’s national anthem and national flag, an image of professional athletes sweating on the sports field… What you probably wouldn’t think of is English competitions. Recently, an English Olympics was held at Luwan Senior High School. With reference to its literal meaning, you may be able to deduce that it is simply a competition about English proficiency, but different from the Olympic Games, our English Olympics is held once every year. Gradually, it has become a tradition at LWBC.

This year, the English Olympics lasted an entire three weeks, starting on March 21^st and ending on April 4^th. About a week before the English Olympics began, our principal Mr. Berg posted a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board in the hallway. Next to it, there was an appealing poster which introduced the events and explained the rules in detail. Right after classes finished, all the students rushed into the corridor to take a look. The grade 10s were especially excited. They were attracted because they just came to our school for a short time and they didn’t know much about the English Olympics. Therefore, this event seemed novel to them. In order to motivate everyone in the program to participate, all students were required to sign up for a minimum of 2 events.

The English Olympics consisted of different types of games. There were four this year: Transcribing, Boggle, Spelling Bee and Pronunciation Battle. The first two were held on March 21^st. Students who participated in Transcribing needed to listen to a short recording on a loop and write a perfect transcription as fast as possible. I was one of the contestants. To be honest, I found some parts of the recordings challenging because the narrator was speaking with a British accent, which I’m not used to. Luckily, I earned second place in the finals. Next, students playing Boggle wrote down as many words as they could find on the boggle board in 1 minute. In this race between six house teams, the Yellow Honeybees emerged the victors.

The two other events took place on the following Wednesday, March 28^th. In the Spelling Bee competition, the judge read out a word and each team worked together to correctly spell the word. This time, the Grey Sharks came out first. Last but not least, was the Pronunciation Battle. Students took turns reading passages in an English pronunciation APP named Liulishuo. Some students had used the APP before, and so they almost got a perfect score like 95 out of 100 in the competition. There was even a tie among the top 3 teams. Then April 4^th was the big day for us, the finals. Students were gathered in the classroom to watch the games and support their teams. The result was fairly interesting: the Yellow Team, as well as the Grey Team, won first place twice respectively, Orange Tigers got second place three times, and at last, the Red Dragons earned the third place twice. Congratulations to the winners!

It has been a thrilling month. English Olympics is one of the mainstays of the BC program. Students always have a lot of fun on this annual event. More importantly, activities vary every year, so students don’t get bored. It’s also great to see all the students at LWBC sitting in one classroom playing the game and watching their house teams earn points. Indeed, we practice our English through the process of competing with each other. We learn while we are having fun.

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An open house is held by Luwan Senior High School in April of every year. Students and parents are welcomed to visit and know more about our BC program on this day. To prepare for the open house, students in Luwan’s BC program cleaned their classrooms carefully, seizing on the smallest detail. Our principal, Mr. Berg, also ordered some nice bottles and key chains / nail clippers as presents for the visitors. 

This year, the open house was held on March 31^st, lasting four hours. Before visiting the school, all the parents were invited to enjoy some speeches and presentations in the school hall. Mr. Berg gave a nice speech there. After this event was finished, parents and students were free to walk around and ask any question about the school.

On the first floor, the space beside the elevator was reserved for the BC program. Before the visitors came, our volunteers put the presents on the desks tidily and placed two big posters beside the desks which briefly introduced our BC program. After all the preparations were finished, all the teachers stayed there and half of the volunteers went back to the sixth floor, waiting to show our study environment to the visitors. At the beginning, there weren’t many visitors since the domestic side was holding an entrance examination for the students. Gradually, more and more parents came and our teachers and volunteers became very busy. Conversely, the volunteers on the sixth floor were relatively leisurely. Most of the parents were gathering on the first floor.

About our program, there was a question that the parents were most curious about: since our tuition is the same as the domestic students’, how can the teaching quality be guaranteed? The answer is that in the BC program, all teacher must have a BC teaching certificate. “I think our teachers teach very well and they are very responsible to us,” said Shining from grade 12.

The open house was held very successfully. It promoted communication between the school and parents. Parents and students gained a deeper understanding of our BC program.

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 On the sixth floor in Luwan Senior High School’s BC Program, there is a wall filled with a lot of students’ names. They’re written with great respect on many pieces of pink paper. This is the honour roll.

What is an Honour Roll?

Honour rolls are a part of many countries’ education system. At our school it also includes a “Principal’s List”. These concepts can be defined as “a roster of names of persons deserving honour; especially a list of students achieving academic distinction.” The first known use of this phrase was in 1863 to praise students and encourage them to keep working hard. At our school, the students with a GPA higher than 3.0 earn a place on the honour roll, and the students with a GPA higher than 3.7 get a spot on the principal’s list.

The History of the Honour Roll in LWBC

According to the data that teachers gave me, our school began at 2012. The percentage of students on the honour roll and principal’s list through the years is as below.

In the first year we started our school, the percentage at that time looks unfavourable. The principal was not satisfied. So school community introspected made improvements. “As one sows, so shall he reap”. The efforts really paid off in the next year. The 0% for principal list increased to 4% and the 28% for honour roll jumped to 44% . Every year from then on, the overall percentage has increased a little bit. During the current academic year, 73% of students are on the honour role and 19% on the principal’s list. Although we have a lower percentage of students on the principal’s list this year, but it is important to clarify that we have less grade 12 students this year and they are always the group most represented on the principal’s list. To clarify the data even more, 92% of our students are currently either on the honour role of principal’s list.  It’s the pleasure of all the students, it’s the treasure of the school, too.

What’s the Secret of the high marks in LWBC?

There is a saying: “Industry is the parent of success.” For sure, we cannot do well without continuing to learn and work hard. But only having a good attitude is not always enough. The educational method way is essential when someone is teaching adolescent teenagers. As one of the students studying in LWBC, I believe the deepest two secrets are encouragement and teaching students in accordance with their aptitudes. LWBC uses a small-class system for teaching. This system makes sure everyone is heard. I am one of the beneficiaries and a good example of this student focused education system.

When I first came to this school, I was not happy. But the teachers observed me carefully and found my personal advantage, art. They talked to me a lot and offered me plenty of chances to learn such as inviting some friends who are art professors to our school to give us many unforgettable speeches about art techniques or some requirements for applying to art university. Meanwhile, they allowed me to work on my art portfolio as part of my school work! I improved my own skills because of it. Now I have received an offer to my dream university of Art and Design and I appreciate all that they have taught me.

LWBC is a good choice for all kinds of students because everyone will be respected here. As a student of LWBC, I am proud of it.

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We Call Ourselves “Krakens” 

Ultimate Frisbee is not a sports game that Chinese people are familiar with. However, Ultimate Frisbee is popular among young Canadian students. As a Canadian offshore school, Luwan BC established a Frisbee club and a Frisbee team called “Kraken” in order to let students experience a more Canadian school life.

What is ultimate frisbee?

Ultimate Frisbee is a sport played by seven players on each team with a flying disc. During the game, players are not allowed to have physical contact. Without a referee, the crux of this game is maintaining a positive, fair spirit. Players try to pass the disc back and forth to teammates. They also cannot move their feet when holding the Frisbee. Points are scored when a teammate catches a throw in the opposing end zone.

We call ourselves “Krakens”

In the dictionary, “Kraken” is a sea monster who has eight tentacles. We call ourselves “Kraken” in order to have the same powerful hands as the Kraken, which can help us to catch more discs in the game. Frisbee Club is scheduled to be held every lunch break and after school. The purpose of everyday practice in mainly to allow students to exercise and get some fresh air after lunch and school, which is good for their health and studies. Our passion motivated us to make great achievements and develop a more close partnership in the Shanghai Youth Open and BCOS tournaments last year. It’s all thanks to Mr. Chang’s hard work, organizing and coaching this club. He’s a professional trainer who teaches Krakens many useful skills and strategies. “Krakens do enjoy all Frisbee games and Krakens never give up,” he said. This year, all grade 12 students said to our freshmen, “We welcome everyone to come to the club and make friends with each other”.  It’s great to have a lot of grade 10 students join the Frisbee club. A student in grade 10 said, “It’s a mix of all of the greatest sports. When I play Frisbee, I am cutting like a soccer player and running like a runner”. Ultimate Frisbee is unique and unlike any other sport, but has connections with other sports. A girl from grade 10 said, “It’s great that girls can be on the same team with boys. There is no gender bias in this game. Girls can also practice the skill and get fit in the club”. We have our captains, George Li and Sharon Liao, who lead this club to have a high-leveled Frisbee team. This year, we joined a league in Shanghai with schools, like Nanmo, Sino, and Xiehe. We have already battled them and sharpened our skills against these schools. This is our Frisbee club and the team “Kraken”. We are Krakens and we are proud of ourselves.

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Now it’s 12:20 p.m., break time after lunch. Some students are nervously playing on their cellphones in the classrooms. It seems something scary is coming soon. A man suddenly comes in with the huge sound of the door opening. “Ah, you are reading Chinese! Give me your cellphone and come take it after 1:40 in my office,” the man says. The student looks up in a panic and then hands in the cellphone.

In Luwan Senior High School, every student can only read English during the time of BC courses. Our principle, Mr. Berg, has also mentioned many times in class that students should read more English everyday. It’s very important. However, how many students really notice the importance of reading English? “If I listened to Mr. Berg’s advice and read more English when I was in grade 10, I believe English 12 would be easier for me,” said Shining in grade 12.

If Chit Chat is the way to help students improve their oral English, then reading is a method to improve their writing. During the process of learning English, everyone may experience difficulties memorizing vocabulary. Although students successfully memorize thousands of words, they don’t know how to use them properly. Reading is the solution to this problem. When students are reading English, some of the vocabulary that they memorized before may appear in sentences. If they think carefully about the connection between the word and the sentence, the way to use the word will be found. Furthermore, English articles is written by native speakers can also help students improve their poor grammar. Grammar mistakes often cause students to get very low marks. However, if students always read English, which is written in correct grammar, the correct grammatical structure will leave an impression in their minds. Therefore, if students read more, more correct grammatical collocations will be accumulated.

The English 12 provincial exam is very hard. Every student in the BC program must take the exam before they graduate. For most students, their mark on the exam is very important because it can decide whether they can go to their dream universities. “Students who read more tend to have higher marks than others,” said Mr. Berg who has taught English 12 at Luwan for three years. So why don’t we stop playing on our cellphones and start reading more English everyday?

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Luwan’s BC program has a tradition of holding an annual badminton competition. This year, the the competition was held in March. Students were also excited to hear that the winners will have the chance to go compete with students from other BC schools. As a result, almost all the students, separated into six house teams, practiced a lot in order to play well and were very eager to compete.

In order to have a high level competition, the student council divided the six house teams into 3 big groups, yellow and orange, pink and green and red and grey. Each group had 3 boys and 3 girls attend the competition. Many grade 10s signed up for the badminton tournament as soon as the sign-up sheet is available. They were really excited for the tournament and willing to beat grade 11s and 12s so that they can go to the larger badminton tournament.

All of the grade 10s arrived in the gym early. They brought their own rackets and warmed up. They seriously intimidated the grade 11s and 12s, so the grade 11s and 12s also took the game seriously. The atmosphere in the gym seemed like a professional badminton tournament. The competitions were really intense between different players. The boys were seriously fighting each other. Their games were really attractive; for example, the game between Jerry Li and Patrick. They are both good at sports, so at the beginning of the game they made hard shots to each other. At one point, Jerry Li used his back hand to smash the birdie, and the birdie was going to hit the ground. However, Patrick ran like a flash and hit the birdie over the net. Girls also refuse to be inferior. They fought really hard during the game. After all the games, the winners were announced. Lola in grade 12 won first place for the girls and the winner for the boys is Jerry Gong in grade 11. They will represent Luwan at the BCOS badminton tournament.

All the BC students enjoyed this tournament. “I didn’t believe that I could win the championship in this tournament and I’m really excited to attend the BCOS tournament in the future,” said Lola.

“I think everyone who attended this tournament enjoyed the badminton and tried their best during the game,” said grade 11’s Price, “especially the grade 10 students. They are really strong, but they need prepare more skills so that they can beat others.” And the grade 10 students also have many feelings about this tournament: “We learned a lot of badminton skills from others, and we got to know each other better during this tournament, so we want more activities like this.” In general, all the students in BC enjoyed this tournament.

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Usually, enrolment for the following fall term courses happens during summer time. For example, if you are registered for the fall term in 2018, you need to choose courses in advance in June, July or August. Generally, the calendar on a university’s official website can tell you both required courses and elective courses for your major. Sometimes, it also includes the required GPA for first year students. A lot of you guys may be curious about whether there are some easy courses, also known as “water courses” in mandarin to boost up the GPA. According to my experience, some upper year students are willing to share their experience with you. However, it’s very important to notice that even in the same course, the course materials and the levels of exams will change because of students’ feedback in the previous year. I chose a water course called Introduction to Media Studies. It’s been a famous easy course in my campus for years. Unfortunately, last year, a student wrote to the professor that the course was too easy and he or she learned nothing. After that, the course has become more difficult this year. The next question is whether U of T is as hard as everyone says it is. According to U of T official statistics, despite the fact that approximately 30% of U of T students had an average of 95% or higher out of their top four grade 12 courses, the average grade for first-year courses at U of T is 68%. Obviously, the workload in university is much harder than in high school. Besides, evaluation is also stricter. One of my professors said that doing ok is just a C in university. In order to get an A, your work needs to be really excellent. However, it doesn’t mean that we are going to die at U of T.

The university definitely provides some useful services. The most well-known one is the writing center. The instructors there can help students to revise their compositions from a variety of perspectives, including citation, grammar and flow, outline and so on. More importantly, the English Language Development Centre (ELDC) offers special programs. For example, in September, I attended a seven-week program called Reading and Writing Excellence (RWE). In the program, I was required to read academic texts for at least 40 minutes a day and then spend 20 minutes writing a journal by using critical thinking. An instructor in the program provided some feedback three times a week. Besides, the instructor and I had a one-on-one meeting every two weeks. The program really helped me to adapt to university writing at the beginning of the term. In addition, the fee for the RWE program is free since it’s included in my expensive tuition. The manager of the program said that students should attend this kind of program, otherwise they are paying for others to have a better grade. I agree with her. She is completely right.

I would like to say that my university life is bittersweet. The above is just my own experience and suggestions. To be honest, the best way to figure out what university life looks like is to experience it by yourself.

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