It had only been a week since the beginning, and those teenagers were dizzy. Summer lay before them. The university is only a few months away, a long road that some still can’t be theirs.
One will soon leave for prep courses at UC Berkeley. Another has an apprenticeship at a Bank of America branch. But this recent afternoon is not so much about the long term as it is about the past.
These scholars, who attended Los Angeles Unified Schools in East and South Los Angeles, are themselves the COVID elegance of 2023. They were top freshmen when the pandemic forced campus closure in March 2020. Now, as so many others have moved to normal, those academics have explained how the pandemic has left a transformative mark on their prime school years.
They returned to college as juniors, lives turned upside down, academics tattered, and the emotional consequences of the pandemic palpable.
Gathered at InnerCity Struggle, a Boyle Heights nonprofit, they described a pressing resilience, a compulsion toward a brighter long-term that carried them through waves of grief, rebuilding relationships and the strain of school applications. Some spoke about their reports with food insecurity, housing instability, increased anxiety and depression. Everyone talked about the teachers, circle of family and friends who took them their 4 years.
These are some of his thoughts.
Ana Cristyna Baena Chavez, Roosevelt High School
Ana Cristyna Baena Chavez, 17, moved to Los Angeles in November 2021 of her sophomore year. He attended school in San Juan, Mexico, where some public schools incur expenses such as lunch, uniforms, and tuition. But her father couldn’t take it anymore, so she and her younger brother flew alone to Los Angeles to continue their education.
Ana’s father has no legal standing in the United States. Her mother died when she was 8 years old. The two brothers, U. S. citizens, were joined by their 20-year-old sister Naydelin, who lived with her half-sister.
“It’s not simple not to have either parent with you. Or having no one to lean on,” he said. You try to triumph over those facts and you try to move toward a better future. “
He enrolled in distance learning at Roosevelt High School. While other students were used to Zoom, Ana had never used it. She remembers groping for buttons, unable to participate and fearing her instructor would think she wasn’t paying attention.
She felt more alone than ever. His friends were in Mexico; she didn’t know in Los Angeles. Her principal put her in touch with United Students, a leadership program organized through InnerCity Struggle. Finally, a Zoom fan, she played Scribbl. io and Mario Kart with other high school students.
When school counselors told her she was way behind, she took credit recovery and summer courses, and took complex point courses, achieving a near-perfect GPA.
But monetary pressures weigh on them. Ana and her two brothers returned to stay with another extended family. He knew that the places he lived were not his home. He trusted his siblings and remembered the promise he made to his mother: he would graduate from the best school. and move on to college.
“I think that’s why I still need to move on to school and why I don’t need to give up even though I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said of her promise. “I can’t give up on this one. “
Ana was implemented at five campuses of the University of California, was accepted from three and to attend UC Berkeley, where she won maximum monetary aid.
“It gave me Harry Potter vibes. What struck me the most was the library,” he said after a stopover in the spring. “I see myself reading very hard in this library. “
Although he anticipates difficulties as a first-generation student, he plans to double down on his studies in sociology and finance. She got a paid apprenticeship at Bank of America to learn how to be a bank teller.
When he reflects on where he has felt most “at home” since arriving in Los Angeles, he thinks of the Roosevelt University Center, where he surprised with a bouquet of balloons and applause: He had been awarded the Watkins Scholarship, a $40,000 scholarship awarded through the nonprofit partnership for Los Angeles schools. And he thinks about his first friends with United Students and the prom he attended with them.
“These are small moments, but they’re huge for me,” he said. “You’re not used to having that if you don’t have it in your own home. “
Kevin Valladares, Mendez High School
The pandemic has taught 18-year-old Kevin Valladares how to ask for help.
When his space was cut off at the time of the year’s online classes, he frantically texted his AP math instructor from a neighbor’s phone. I had to make verification corrections. Was there anything I could just do?He enjoyed math, even though he had failed the first two controls. After years of ESL classes, math was anything I could understand.
“[My teacher] told me, ‘Turn it on as soon as you have energy,'” she recalled.
“If I needed something, if I needed more time, I just had to talk to my teachers,” she said. “I guess I didn’t realize that my teachers were so human. “
Kevin’s parents worked in garment factories, which shut down the pandemic. For two months they were unemployed. And for the first time, I was worried about food.
Humiliated, he accepted the help of InnerCity Struggle, who gave the circle of relatives $500 gift cards for food. Kevin filled the refrigerator with staples and bought sugar crackers and chips for his brother. Some weekends, the circle of relatives dined at Kentucky Fried. Chicken.
Kevin shared a room with his parents and little brother, his most sensible bed fitting both the bed and the desk. His aunt, uncle and two children shared the bedroom of the house. He set his alarm every school day for 1 minute before. nine a. m. Then he would turn around, turn on the screen, and pay attention to his master. Sometimes, he would just go back to sleep.
Some days she was babysitting her 8-year-old brother, who couldn’t take Zoom classes. Their grades ranged from A to Bs.
When he returned to coaching in person, it was a new scenario: He didn’t recognize some of his classmates and professors after nearly two years. Friendships developed: small discussions in fancy Mandarin turned into a daily greeting, then they exchanged Instagram handles and hung out after school.
“The pandemic has been so long. I like, ‘I never faint. ‘I’m a junior now,” Kevin said.
He elected the student body president. ” It’s this understanding that we have a voice in the school,” he said. “The school is the students. “
She found that academics and teachers were drawn to her ability to pay attention to their concerns: clubs that had failed in the pandemic, insufficient mind-conditioning programs, lack of loose menstrual products in the bathroom.
At the time of university applications, Kevin deployed on 4 CPUs and 4 CSU campuses. He accepted UC Berkeley on a full scholarship from the Jordan Brand Wings program. This summer, he will take two courses to progress at UC Berkeley, where he plans to grade elementary in math.
Estrella Salazar, Lincoln High School
In June 2020, either of Estrella Salazar’s parents contracted COVID-19, isolating themselves in any of the bedrooms of their home. One night, she woke up from her makeshift bed made of blankets on the living room floor to the sound of ambulance sirens and firefighters stormed the house. Later, he said his father had suffered a panic attack.
When the ambulance left, the 18-year-old was alone, sitting on the kitchen floor. And for 10 minutes, he shivered, unable to swallow, speak, or move.
“It’s as if all the forces of gravity are gone,” he later wrote in a poem about the experiment. It was his first anxiety attack.
A self-proclaimed sociable person, Estrella has noticed that her social skills decimated the pandemic. His voice was stripped, literally. Once, his AP global history instructor asked him on Zoom to read the day’s learning objective. When he opened his mouth, he found that he couldn’t speak. He started hyperventilating, turned off the computer and left.
Her father passed away suddenly in June 2021. Estrella, who was eager to return to campus, had just begun to feel anxiety about the pandemic. Now he felt like he was “falling back down the rabbit hole. “
“It’s a hundred times worse [than the pandemic]. I didn’t know what life was going to be like. I had to be strong again. I had to relearn what strength was like,” he said.
But he remembered what his father had told him: never settle for less, no matter the situation. Keep going until you get what you really want.
What he was looking for was to attend the university of his dreams, the University of Southern California. Her father had gotten treatment at USC Medical Center when she was a child.
“In my opinion, they were his heroes. So I sought to be part of this bigger being,” he said. “I sought to put myself in those spaces. “
Estrella spent the summer between now and freshman year reading and running at Old Navy. She elected student body president, letting students know that “no one is alone. “and more than fear. “
She submitted her application to USC early. When she found out that she had adjourned the session, she cried but did not tell anyone. In May, after a discussion of English elegance over Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and overdue dreams, an email arrived in her inbox. He had been accepted.
This fall, he will study political science on a full scholarship, courtesy of the Jordan Brand Wings program. Someday, she hopes to be a congresswoman or senator.
“I’ll be the one sitting in the chair, making those decisions and listening to my people,” he said.
But that’s years away. For now, there is only summer left. There are museums in which to make a stopover and jobs to look for. A list of Los Angeles concert venues to tick off. A boyfriend and brothers to say goodbye to.
“I need to perceive everything,” Estrella said. I did. “
This story was printed in the Los Angeles Times.
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