Progress in Digital Literacy: Closing the digital divide between Spring and Fall

When many of us pivoted to distance learning for the first time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020, it required a great deal of resilience, perseverance, and creativity, qualities that we observe in migrant learners every day. I became an emergent teacher after 17 years of teaching adult immigrants and shared a successful journey with two classes of learners who are classified as Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education. But in the process, many students were lost because of lack of access to the internet, lack of computers, and lack of digital literacy. Over the summer, many of us (educators) immersed ourselves in webinars and other training, learning from our more experienced colleagues, and collaborating across the globe as well as locally, developed plans for another shutdown.

As a result of this experience and planning, the shutdown that goes into effect in our school on Monday will likely lose no students. (When my class and I were quarantined four days ago, we were able to make a flawless transition to distance learning.) Our school prepared teachers over the summer with extensive training in Google Classroom, among other technologies. World Ed, LESLLA and Minnesota Literacy were my guiding forces to transition me from a digital immigrant to a competent distance learning educator. When our semester began in person in September, we all went to work preparing our students to use Google Classroom. My ESL 1 students were engaged in daily digital literacy training with an experienced computer teacher who believed, like many of us, that we can set the bar high for our students and support their achievement in digital literacy just as we can for academic achievement.

As most of us are aware, the digital divide is, in part, a result of racist policies than perpetuate poverty, and, as a result, last Spring students were in effect abandoned as they lacked the access to the internet and the equipment that would ensure their ability to engage in continued studies.

My school surveyed every student upon admittance in September and gathered data to identify the needs of every student in order to then acquire the resources students needed for future distance learning. As a result, every student was equipped with a Chromebook or laptop and ensured access to WIFI prior to the most recent shutdown.

At this time, 100% of my students are engaged in the same number of hours of instruction in distance learning as they were in classroom instruction. This is a dramatic departure than the situation we encountered six months ago.

My students' test scores are evidence of their success and improvement over the past months of in-class instruction, including three who improved 15-20 points each. I believe that it is possible that they will continue to progress during our time of distance learning, in large part because of the support and guidance of our school leadership, but also because of the extraordinary commitment students have to improving their lives, and their deep understanding of the profound impact that their current education will have on their achieving a full integration into their new host country. I remain in awe of them.