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.