Unionville High School
Unionville High School
This public high school was established in 1985 with more than 1,600 students enrolled. It’s one of the thirty-three high schools of the York Region District School Board, which serves the province of Ontario. Unionville High School is located in the city of Markham, thirty kilometres away from the Toronto city centre. It’s the largest city in the York region in terms of population, with more than 338 thousand people living there.
Programs
One of the opportunities offered to the students of the Unionville School of York Region District School Board is a special program, which was worked out in collaboration with Seneca College. This program aims to provide students with the opportunity to earn academic credits that can be transferred to a higher education institution.For example, during one semester, four to six credits can be earned by a high school student towards their future studies in Seneca College. The classes within the program are held at one of the Seneca College campuses, and are delivered not only by high school teachers, but also by college instructors. This program at Unionville High School allows students to get used to the college environment and introduce themselves to the college disciplines and way of studying.
The previous program allows Unionville students to earn credits for continuing their studies at Seneca College, but there is another program that offers students to take other college and apprenticeship programs, while still at Unionville. Eleven and twelve grade students can take the following courses at Centennial College: Baking and Pastry Arts, Social Psychology, Healthy Lifestyle Management, Introduction to Energy and Sustainability, Video Games and others. George Brown College also offers a number of courses for Unionville High School students, some of them are Electrical Fundamentals, Machining, Introduction to Sewing and Drafting, Welding Arts, and Construction Health and Safety. Unionville provides transportation to students to the college campuses, where the courses will be held. All the courses last for fourteen weeks, on average, which is around three hours per week. Though it may seem too grueling and challenging, it can become a great preparatory stage for college education and personal development.
Unionville High School is famous for its arts program and was even coined as Arts Unionville. The school encompasses advanced arts facilities for visual arts, music, dance and drama classes and nine computer labs with more than three hundred computers. To be enrolled to the Arts Unionville program, beginning from the grade nine, a student needs to undergo an audition, where their abilities will be assessed. An audition costs $20 and is intended to identify talented students who want to study arts at the professional level after graduating from Unionville High School, or who simply see arts as a fulfilling pastime.Some of the Arts programs of Unionville High School are the following: Dance, Visual Arts, Music, Classical Studies and Dramatic Arts. Besides, the Unionville High School offers the classes of Business Studies, Canadian and World Studies, English, International Languages, Social Sciences, English and French as a Second language.
Speaking of English as a Second Language, Unionville High School is happy to welcome international students and newcomers to the country, offering them special classes. They aim at teaching foreigners not only all the aspects of the English language, but also Canadian culture, traditions and help them with possible bureaucratic issues. Adult students who take the English as a Second Language program at the Unionville High School are encouraged to participate in community service, which is also one of the graduation requirements. The Unionville High School considers volunteering for the sake of community as one of the best ways to streamline the process of integration to the new society and can also be an incentive to continue one’s education in the field they gained volunteering experience in. Within the program, the Unionville High School holds different workshops and assemblies for English language learners such as Youth and the Law, Dealing with Stress and Anxiety, Craft Workshop, Education and Career Pathways, Developing Good Habits and others.
Going back to the main courses that can be taken at the Unionville , as was mentioned above, one of them is Canadian and World Studies. This program includes a number of disciplines, which Canadian and World Studies embrace. For example, at the beginning of grade eleven, students will study Economics, Law and Politics. During this course, students at Unionville High School learn about the possible ways of changing the Canadian and world economy, by studying how it functions and the internal machinery of economy in general. Canadian Law is another course within the Canadian and World Studies program offered by the Unionville High School. It focuses on studying the intricacies of Canadian family, employment and criminal law, so that students have a profound understanding of the subject and developed legal thinking. Two other courses within the program of Unionville High School are Analysing Current Economic Issues and Canadian and International Law. After achieving a High School Diploma at Unionville High School, international students can continue their education in the program of Intercultural and International Studies, offered by Douglas College. It lasts for four terms, leads to an Associate Degree and can be taken on a full and part-time basis in the province of British Columbia. Inspired by the disciplines studied during the Canadian and World Studies at Unionville High School, students can proceed to studying international relations, global issues and develop their communication skills at Douglas College, and then further their knowledge and achieve a Bachelor degree in political or international studies in a university. To complete this program offered by Douglas College, a student has to earn sixty credits. The cost of one credit for an international student is around $740.
During the program of International Languages students at the Unionville High School can learn Mandarin, beginning from the tenth grade. Step by step, students hone their skills of speaking, writing, listening and reading in Mandarin and the last school year is dedicated to preparing students for the postsecondary studies conducted in Mandarin. This means that students achieve a very high level of language competency during their International Languages program at the Unionville High School. Then, after graduation from the Unionville High School, students can enter the University of Toronto and take Chinese Language and Culture as minor toward the degree of Honours Bachelor of Arts.
Another program which can be taken in the Unionville High School is Computer Studies. It starts at grade nine and lasts till the end of grade twelve. The Unionville High School offers students to start with introduction to computer technology and then advance their knowledge, studying programming, software development, computer environments and algorithms. During the grade twelve at the Unionville High School, students can take the program of 3D Visualisation, where they will learn about developing Virtual Reality and mobile applications. Another program is Computer Engineering Technology where students study robotics and networks. As you can see, one of the main aims of the Unionville High School is to prepare students for their future studies and, most importantly, help them to find what they want to study in depth on the post-secondary level.
Accommodation
International students, who wish to study in the Unionville High School can choose Homestay as an accommodation option. The Homestay program presupposes that an international student will live with a host family, during their studies in the Unionville High School. Such a program provides a foreigner with an opportunity to instantly immerse into Canadian culture and acquire the English language, all in a homely and supportive atmosphere. All the host families are checked for safety and adequacy before it’s given a right to host an international student, that’s why there’s no need to worry about their well-being. Moreover, all of the homestay program providers monitor how a student and family members coexist together, if they feel comfortable with each other, and if all the safety and living requirements of a student are met. Also, it’s natural for international students to feel lonely, when coming to a new country and being surrounded by a foreign culture. But the family members, who host an international student can help them to get through this phase, blend in and participate in a huge number of extracurricular activities offered by the Unionville High School.
Future Prospects
One of the main reasons why international students choose to complete high school in Canada is the easier access to higher education. After graduation from the Unionville High School, international students can choose any of the colleges and universities and further their education on the next level. Finishing a higher educational establishment in Canada brings even more opportunities for an international student. Firstly, they may go for a post-graduation work permit to gain some work experience in Canada. Next, a graduate of the Unionville High School can apply for the Express Entry, in other words, a permanent resident status, which can then be extended to Canadian citizenship. Thus, graduation from the Unionville High School opens up a lot of possibilities inside of Canada, without even mentioning how many of them lie outside of this country.
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