The Wall Street Journal reports:

When Victoria Vial’s Miami middle school shut down last spring and her classes went online, it felt like the beginning of an adventure. “I was in my pajamas, sitting in my comfy chair,” the 13-year-old recalled. “I was texting my friends during class.”

Then she received her academic progress report. An A and B student before the pandemic, she was failing three classes. The academic slide left her mother, Carola Mengolini, in tears. She insisted her daughter create to-do lists and moved the girl’s workspace into the guest bedroom to pull up her grades.

Over the summer, Victoria’s tennis and theater camps were canceled. Her family postponed a planned trip to Argentina to visit her extended family.

She formed a pandemic pod with five close friends, but the girls bickered. Subcliques formed, and Victoria and her best friend found themselves excluded. The pod fell apart.

The return of in-person schooling last fall brought some relief, but with some of her classmates still at home, teachers had to shift their attention between in-person kids and those online, leaving students feeling disorganized and behind.

The biggest blow came in December, when Victoria’s 78-year-old grandfather died of Covid-19. Her mother flew to Argentina for six weeks to help her grandmother. Her father, grief-stricken and withdrawn, had little energy to cook or clean. Christmas came and went without the usual celebratory meals and piles of presents.

“It was super, super hard,” says Victoria. “I didn’t know how to feel. All of the people I look up to, they are all, like, breaking down.”

She grew anxious about going to school—afraid she would catch the virus and spread it to her parents. Some classmates didn’t believe Covid was real, she said, and some wore their masks down below their chins or dangled them from their ears. Students talked and laughed in clumps, without social distancing. Her grandfather’s death loomed large. “They don’t understand how quick it all can just change everyone’s lives,” she says.

She turned to social media for solace and to stave off boredom. She gave herself makeovers and posted the results on TikTok. She cut her bangs, then added a pink streak to her hair. She added four new ear piercings with a safety pin. She shaved part of her head.

As the months piled up, she found it hard to stay motivated to do her schoolwork. Her grades have started falling again. “Every day is the exact same,” she says. “You kind of feel like, what’s the point?”

Rarely have America’s children suffered so many blows, and all at once, as during the pandemic’s lost year. [Continue reading…]