Tracie Barrett

A musician friend in Aotearoa/New Zealand was telling me about the live gigs he has been playing lately, and those he has booked, and there’s a resurgence in both audience numbers and in those staying to hear the band’s final number. I asked if he felt that was because people were valuing live music and being in a live...

Covid sucks! I want to be clear about that. This global pandemic has so far cost us more than a million lives directly, and the indirect cost is still being tallied. The aftereffects of this, particularly on those already vulnerable, will be felt for generations to come. This very physical threat has also badly impacted on most people’s financial, mental,...

“ … and then, COVID struck.”  As a storyteller, a reader of, and a listener and watcher of stories, I’ve been hearing the above line constantly from others, while watching it play out in my own life and the lives of those I know and love. For myself, it’s been a tale of an expected job that no longer existed, a...

Professional photographer and videographer Aaron Michelson has seen a lot of the world but considers his birthplace of Hong Kong to be his home. The 30-year-old holds a US passport thanks to his parents and spent time in the United States every summer or winter when younger. He also holds a Hong Kong ID and is a permanent resident there, and...

When coronavirus first appeared on teacher Melissa’s personal radar, she and colleagues didn’t take it very seriously. That changed quickly for the US citizen who lives and works in Lombardia, a northern region of Milan, Italy, that became the ground zero of the virus in Europe. Melissa says a couple who worked at the same school in Milan last year...

A look at how teachers, parents and teachers are coping with schooling during the coronavirus global pandemic. Occupational therapist Tara and her husband live in the prairie province of Manitoba, Canada, with their two sons, aged 12 and 8. She says coronavirus affected her directly in early March when she was working in schools in Nunavut  - the vast, sparsely populated northernmost...

A look at how parents, teachers and students around the world are coping with schooling during a global pandemic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: One thing we see with the coronavirus crisis is that the rules and expectations change daily, if not hourly. As I was doing the final edit of this article on the morning of Saturday, April 4 (Australian time), theBeijing teacher...

Remote teaching is difficult for all teachers but brings some unique challenges for Greg, a veteran teacher working in New Zealand’s far North. Greg teaches technology subjects, which in New Zealand encompasses metal work, wood work, design and technical drawing. His first stint as a teacher lasted 12 years, before he worked as a designer for 10 years in the...

A look at how parents, teachers and students around the world are coping with schooling during a global pandemic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- When I started interviewing Kaylene for this series, Cambodia was not in lockdown. A few days later, on Sunday, April 3, I woke to the news that the country was considering instituting a state of emergency. Two days later, Kaylene explained...

A look at how people are coping with schooling and education in this global pandemic, and how it has affected students, parents and teachers around the world.  Carlie is a teacher aide at Brisbane Independent School, in the state capital’s western suburbs, which was attended by both her children, now 19 and 15. She says it is an “integral school,”...