As I (finally) publish this website after over two years of development, the timing seems perfect. If there is a time when we can all understand, at least a bit, about what it’s like to try to learn and function with depleted bandwidth, that time is now. I suspect there are very few people in the US (and globally, actually), who have been unaffected in some way by the pandemic - illness and death in our families, loss of employment, pressures of balancing home/family and work-from-home, work-away stress for essential workers in sometimes high-risk environments, long separations from family and friends, loneliness, depression, anxiety, uncertainty. All these are major bandwidth stealers.
As an economically-secure straight, white woman, the stress of the pandemic and related pressures have left me with seriously depleted bandwidth, even on my best days. Now, think of people - adults and children - who are persistently financially strapped, are black, brown, or indigenous, differently-abled, immigrant, identify as LGBTQ+, who are members of a religious minority, who live in an unsafe home or neighborhood, who have a chronic mental or physical illness, etc. The uncertainty from the pandemic is piled onto the realities of their everyday lives that already diminish their bandwidth.
When this pandemic is over and we’re back to being in our offices and kids are back in school and we all want to forget about all the stress and loss, let’s remember this: The loss of cognitive capacity that we all have experienced due to uncertainty, isolation, anxiety, stress, … was due to conditions beyond our control. When students in certain groups seem to have limited cognitive capacity because of the negative effects of poverty, racism, classism, homophobia, etc., it’s real, and no more under their control than the pandemic is under ours. That recognition, going forward, is the first step to creating learning environments in which ALL students can learn and thrive.