Throughout the country, school closures, remote learning and quarantine are redefining the American teen experience. Many are dealing with grief, trauma and loss that is compounded by the lack of school-day routine and inability to see friends in person or participate in activities that once consumed their lives.
While some had initially hoped that the shutdowns were only temporary and that they’d be going back to their classrooms for the end of the school year, most states have now ruled out that possibility. For teenagers, there are deep losses, but some are finding bright spots as well.
It’s clear that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted low-income families and racial minorities, and some students will experience significant learning loss. At the same time, some previously overscheduled and sleep-deprived students are surprised to find more time for sleep, less stress around completing schoolwork, and more time for simple activities like reading on the front porch, spending time outdoors or having a leisurely dinner as a family.
In a normal school year, Zachary Jones, 17, of Durham, N.C., would see his life “swallowed by baseball.” He and his teammates at Voyager Academy, a charter school in northern Durham, planned to dedicate the season to their longtime head coach, Floyd Clayton “Pete” Shankle Jr., who died of cancer in November.
“We had probably the best team in our school’s history,” Zachary said wistfully, “so it was the year that we could have won a state championship for him.”
But Zachary no longer rushes from school to practice to starting homework at 8:30 p.m., and finds that he now has “an entire day to do my homework with quality.”
Many teenagers say this newfound flexibility and fewer outside obligations mean getting more sleep, even as they desperately miss the routine and normalcy of going to school.
“Our teachers are really accessible if we have a question,” said Sydney Hewit, 15, a sophomore at Corning-Painted Post High School, a public school in Corning, N.Y. “But it’s been difficult. Our learning has kind of been put on hold.” She now receives assignments on Monday mornings through Google Classroom, and has until the following Sunday evening to complete them. Much of the work has been either review or instructional videos.
Before school went online, Sydney was in the dance ensemble for the spring musical, “Crazy for You,” but it never had an opening night or a final curtain call. She uses FaceTime now to check in with friends and sleeps around eight hours every night, instead of her typical five to six hours. To pass the time, she bakes brownies and cookies, dropping them off at friends’ houses each week, and she finds creative writing and independent reading help her be “in a different world for a little bit of each day.”
Cole Hammes, 17, of La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., now creates his own schedule, different from his normal school grid. “I personally don’t like doing math at 8:30 in the morning,” he explains.
Without a morning commute, he has been taking his two dogs on longer walks in his suburban Los Angeles neighborhood, and helping his mom with chores. Still, “it’s stressful not to do the things I used to love.”
Some students are able to continue participating in extracurricular activities using Zoom and other online tools. Caroline Lam, a 13-year-old from Charlotte, N.C., typically dances seven days a week. Now, her teacher provides instruction and corrections virtually, and Caroline dances on carpet instead of the dance studio’s wood floors. “It’s not the same,” Caroline admits. “The corrections are harder to apply because the teacher isn’t right there with you.”
But she is grateful she can still participate in the activity she loves while recognizing that some of her peers don’t have reliable internet access or devices.
To regain control at a time of uncertainty and despair, some students are discovering more purposeful ways to channel their energy. Juliette Fore, 16, of Alexandria, Va., initially found quarantine to be a major adjustment. She worried about the health of her 85-year-old grandfather, who lives with her parents and three siblings. When she heard reports of a worldwide increase in domestic violence during lockdown, she started a campaign to gather donations for House of Ruth, a Washington, D.C.-area shelter for victims of abuse.
A self-described extrovert, Juliette reached out on social media to friends, relatives and classmates. To maintain social distancing, donors would send a message and leave items on their front porches for pickup, or mailed checks directly to her home. Right before Easter, she and her family delivered two minivans full of donations to the shelter.
“I would say the project helped with my coping because it gave me something to really focus on,” Juliette said. “I think everyone’s coping and struggling in their own ways.”
For Lexi Weintraub, 17, from Irvington, N.Y., in Westchester County, creating new rituals with friends and family has helped diminish the disappointment of a truncated senior year. Her friends have started driving separately to a parking lot by the Hudson River and tuning into the same radio station in their respective cars while watching the sun set. At home, her mom recently began a nightly tradition to capture memories that might otherwise be forgotten in the middle of a pandemic. Everyone writes down something they are grateful for or something positive that happened during the day on a slip of colored paper and drops it into a repurposed goldfish bowl.
Being home all the time has been challenging for students like Rahsaan Bernard Jr., 12, of Washington, D.C., who has been home-schooled for nine years. Rahsaan usually plays several team sports and finds it taxing to be unable to go anywhere, but he is grateful to have more time in the evenings to spend with his dad. He uses his time after exercising and completing schoolwork to learn how to design websites. He plans to start a business selling clothing of his own design.
“I’m trying to teach things you have control over and things you don’t,” said DeLise Bernard, Rahsaan’s mother. “I think that having to move through these traumatic experiences for families also allows us to build a level of resilience and connect in ways that we may not have done in the past.”
In a time of uncertainty, there really is no guidebook. “I think it’s already hard for adults to remember how it felt when they were in high school or when they were in middle school or even elementary school,” said Kaci Cadiz, an 18-year-old high school senior from Hillsboro, Ore.
She plans to enroll at Oregon State this fall as a bio-health sciences major and said she worries about being prepared for college. “But I think right now, there are no guidelines on how people should act and cope with this stuff.”
Ana Homayoun is the author, most recently, of “Social Media Wellness: Helping Teens and Tweens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World.”
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