Anxious, nervous and excited for the next step, Holy Trinity Academy graduand Beatrice Saluya is set to leave a school system that gave her a sense of community as a newcomer to Canada just six years ago.
“I’m excited to finish high school, but I’m scared to go into university because it’s a whole new thing,” she said. “Back at JPII I wasn’t really the person who talked a lot because I was new and everything. HTA was a community. It might be cliché, but people are really welcoming, especially the teachers, and the students, too.
“They make you feel like you’re home.”
Home will soon have a new address.
Saluya is enrolling in the University of Calgary’s bachelor of science program to study psychology. From there, her aspirations are to get into law school to pursue work as an immigration lawyer.
“There are just so many issues with immigration, I hear so many things about my friends’ parents fixing their papers and I’m like I want to help,” Saluya said. “Because I came from the community and that’s the least I can do.”
The graduand moved to Canada from the Philippines in 2013 and, with her mother already in the country, quickly got used to playing catch up at school.
“Grade 7 I came over here, knew a bit of English, but not really much,” she said. “I was shocked in Grade 7, just a totally different thing. In the Philippines our education system is way different than here.
“In Philippines we’re in school from 7 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. There are fun activities we do in classes here in Canada compared to Philippines where we just study and memorize stuff.
“In schools (here) you’re more connected to the teachers and they care about you.”
The more interactive education fit Saluya well and helped her feel like a part of the school community in Okotoks. With marks in the 90s, it’s
proving to be a winning formula, despite the education coming in a second language.
“I got better marks here than I did in the Philippines because I’ve actually got help for the stuff I needed to know,” she said. “You learn English, you don’t speak it every day, you still speak (Filipino), but that certainly helped when moving to Canada, oh I know a bunch of things, I can say a bunch of stuff.”
Math and science came more naturally to Saluya whereas the social sciences is where she had to make up ground.
Speech patterns and conversational English took some getting used to.
“Spelling, grammar and everything, that’s what we learned in the Philippines,” she said. “It’s just that you guys speak too fast, we didn’t really learn to talk, the conversational stuff.”
One of the best moments of high school was just a few months ago when Saluya took part in the HTA trip to San Jose, Costa Rica – an annual trek to one of the most poor neighbourhoods in the capital city organized by teacher Les Giraudier.
“The poverty you see in Costa Rica is really similar to the poverty we saw in the Philippines, but I really wasn’t in the poverty areas,” Saluya said. “We went to the poorest community in San Jose and immersed ourselves in what was going on and I was just shocked with the first-hand experience of this is what happens.
“You just want to help the community because we’re here (in Canada) and have everything and then you see that and you think I take everything for granted.
“Their community is so tight, everyone is so happy and hugging each other and we don’t do that in Canada, maybe we should.”
