Local Teacher Recalls Asia Experience As New School Year Begins

PORT HAWKESBURY - Although she admits to anxiety as she settles into her first year of teaching elementary school in the COVID-19 era, Lisa McNamara will also never forget the harrowing circumstances that nearly trapped her in Asia as pandemic-related lockdowns swept the continent this past March. 

McNamara and her son Garrison were all set to spend a year in northern China's Nanchang City last September, with an English-language teaching assignment set for the mother and a standard senior high education awaiting the son. Although Garrison McNamara returned to the family's home in Port Hawkesbury in early 2020, his mother remained in China and started venturing out to visit nearby countries such as Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam during a three-week break that began in mid-January. 

That's when the trouble started.

In the late stages of her time in Thailand, McNamara received word from her Chinese school district that COVID-19 restrictions would result in her having to stay out of the country for the immediate future, forcing her to buy a new laptop and launch distance-education practices for her students from her hostel in Thailand.  

This continued until late March, when increasingly-intense regulations concerning foreign nationals and the cancellation of the remainder of McNamara's school year in Nanchang had her scrambling to find flights between neighbouring Asian countries before finally securing a flight back to China from the Thai capital of Bangkok on March 27, before hastily booking a flight from China to Vancouver that eventually led her to Toronto and then back to Nova Scotia. 

Despite these close calls - and the fact that a colleague of hers from Nanchang City was stuck in Thailand for three months after his contract abruptly ended - McNamara said she was "never afraid of COVID" and actually feels the current social-distancing regulations in Nova Scotia are stronger than those that existed in Asia during the late stages of her time on the continent. 

Today, she admits to feeling a wave of anxiety as she settles into a new Nova Scotia school structure that prohibits students from sitting closely together or visiting their own school cafeterias during their lunch breaks. However, McNamara is hopeful for a smooth school year in her new assignment at East Richmond Education Centre in St. Peter's as September rolls along.