Interview: An International Student and the Canadian Dream
From October 11, 2019
“Oh, it’s just a dream. It’s not going to happen.”
These were the words filling Manon Durand’s head three years ago as she dreamed of moving to Canada. The 23-year-old from Toulon, France, is now participating in her second exchange year at Western University in London, Ont.
Durand is completing online courses for her Master of Arts in English while working as a teaching assistant in the French department at Western.
“When I started doing my first hours of teaching, and I could see that the students really appreciated it…I just felt like I wasn’t wasting my time and I was actually helping people. And they were helping me because I was learning how to be a teacher,” she said.
Durand said that it was only when she came to Canada that she realized she loved teaching. The differences in the school systems between France and Canada really stood out to her. She credits the differences to societal values that future teachers are trained to implement in their classrooms.
In Canada, Durand said, “they really encourage inclusivity and equality, whereas in France we’re kind of behind in all this.” While careful to avoid generalizing, she said “there is good and bad, but for what I think of teaching, I’d rather teach in Canada than in France.”
As part of becoming certified as a teacher in Ontario, Durand needs to complete a Bachelor of Education. For an international student, however, this isn’t an easy feat. Without Permanent Resident status, Durand says she cannot afford the tripled tuition fees that Canadian universities charge international students.
“If you have your PR, you pay the same fees as Canadians. That’s why I want to get my PR as soon as I can, so that I can have a stable status here and do my Bachelor of Education,” she said. It will take Durand at least another three years before she has her PR, and likely another two years after that until she will finish her Bachelor of Education degree.
After having completed a 3-year undergraduate degree, and is undergoing a soon-to-be-completed 3-year Masters degree, Durand still has a long way to go before she can accomplish her dream of becoming a teacher in Canada.
For now, Durand says that her experience as a TA at Western is helping to remind her why she is pursuing her goal. Of when she teaches, she said “I always try to remember what it is to be a student, because I’m still a student.” At the end of the semester last year, a student visited Durand at her office hours and told her how impactful Durand has been on her French studies.
“You’re trying your best but you never know if at the end of the year if they actually learned, or if they were bored. But her coming to me, and saying ‘oh this has been really helpful thank you’ I’m like ‘oh my god I’m going to cry!’ I was so emotional, it was really nice.”
