Through personal stories, photographs, and videos, individuals across the United States share their first-hand accounts of how the global coronavirus pandemic has affected their lives. This special feature includes personal narratives from more than 100 contributors to PBS American Portrait, a project exploring modern American identity through user-generated stories. Among those we meet are a first responder living apart from her son, a warehouse employee deemed essential but working without adequate personal protective equipment or guidance, and a COVID-19 survivor separated from her newborn twins during recovery.

Instructions: Watch the program (or two clips, if short for time) and answer the discussion questions. Then, follow the models presented in the program and two clips to share your own story! We’ve included a toolkit drawn from PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs’ (SRL) Making Sense of Coronavirus Through Media Making and Storytelling curricula (available in full here). The materials are designed to help students capture important stories while accommodating school closures and social distancing measures. SRL’s special unit covers the basics of local community journalism, storytelling, scripting, and video editing, broken into pathways to accommodate varying levels of difficulty, time considerations, interest, and available resources. 

These are difficult times, and students’ stories will add a critical perspective to ongoing coronavirus coverage.