At first glance, there’s not a lot that connects Aransas County in Southeastern Texas to two mountainous towns in central Puerto Rico, more than 2,000 miles away. But that was before Hurricanes Harvey and Maria tore through last August and September, leaving chaos in their wake.

Now, teenagers in both places are attending schools that are not yet back at full capacity, saying goodbye to friends whose families are leaving for good, and struggling to help parents at home deal with the daily turmoil — if they have a home to return to at all.

These students in Puerto Rico and coastal Texas know firsthand that their immediate future has been irrevocably altered by the storms and the ongoing effort to rebuild their devastated communities. As to their long-term prospects, well, adulthood has arrived a lot sooner than many had anticipated.

Students and schools struggle to rebound after hurricanes To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Video by Michael Basilico and Joy Y. Wang

“Kids are having to grow up a whole lot faster through this because parents are dealing with wrecked homes and insurance companies and all that,” said Molly Adams, the director of federal programs in Aransas Independent School District, where Rockport, Texas, is. “Some folks are trying to get a second and third job to get a roof, and then the kids are picking up the slack at home.”

The school district reported in December that 96 percent of its student body experienced homelessness after the storm, and officials at the school said they knew that many of their students still didn’t have permanent housing.

In the Utuado community of Caonillas, Puerto Rico, the Marta Lafontaine school, which serves kindergarten through eighth-grade students, only had partial power from generators and sporadic running water as of mid-April. The school had 128 students before Maria. That fell to 73 after the storm, according to the town’s school superintendent.

NBC News spoke with dozens of students, parents, teachers and school administrators in Texas and Puerto Rico who are still grappling with recovery more than seven months after the hurricanes hit. Their stories revealed kids living with persistent anxiety, families struggling with homelessness, and teachers seriously worried about their students’ futures.