Zenzile DaBreo, a kindergarten teacher at PS/IS 109 in Brooklyn, was honored with the Sanford Teacher Award as the “most inspirational teacher” in New York State. “We only have two rules in my classroom: be respectful and be responsible,” she says.

Years from now, young people will be able to learn what it was like to be a student during the historic COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 through the firsthand accounts of 11th-graders at the Brooklyn HS of the Arts. Through videos, Andrew Savage’s American...