The Digital Divide Has Real-World Impact

A couple of months ago, a student pulled me aside to ask for help with a job application. As a teacher working with adult immigrants and refugees, I hear this request fairly often. After class, we discussed the job she wanted –housekeeping for one of the large hotel chains in the area. Paper applications were no longer accepted.

We looked at their website together. Not only was the application exclusively available online, but applicants were also asked to upload a resume onto the website. “A resume?” I thought, incredulous. “For a housekeeping job?”

Furthermore, my student was expected to create an online profile for her job search and to be able to receive communications through email. My student had arrived about two years earlier from an area of rural Ethiopia where it was uncommon for girls to attend school. Her reading level in English was at about a first-grade level. She had no email account or experience typing documents.

The reality of today’s workforce is that employers are asking for more computer literacy skills from their workers. This situation with my student required more than just the basic ability to read and write the English language. This was more about just understanding how computers and the Internet work. Perhaps it is unintentional, but making job applications online-only creates a filter that divides the workforce into two camps—those who can use computers and those who cannot.

For this reason, as teachers, we really need to teach technology skills to our students. The time of reading, writing and arithmetic as the “basics” is over. Since entry-level custodial and housekeeping jobs require computer skills, we know that our job is to teach these skills explicitly. Our students need to be able to write and save documents, open and maintain email accounts, use their cell phones effectively, manage their bank accounts online, find housing and comparison-shop online. The only access our students may have to a computer could be at school or a public library.

I consider myself fortunate to have access to a computer lab. For my beginning ESL students, we practice turning on the computer, logging in, maneuvering the Internet, typing Web addresses, clicking on links and navigating the buttons on the keyboard. For my intermediate/advanced ESL students, we practice opening email accounts, checking and responding to emails, finding apartments on Craigslist, looking for jobs, typing and saving resumes and responding to questions on our class blog [2].

We are also very fortunate to have an AmeriCorps member [3] from the Community Technology Empowerment Project (CTEP) at our school. The CTEP members provide invaluable support to classroom teachers, as well as teaching stand-alone computer classes. Our CTEP member was also able to sit down with the student, to help her create an online profile and resume. With guidance, our students do not have to live on the other side of a digital divide. We can teach them to master the technology that surrounds them. 

Anfinson is an ELL civics teacher in Minnesota.