Immigrant Adult Students Address Digital Equity in National Publication

Photo credit: melanie fu

This year, BCNC Adult Education students wrote articles and served on the editorial board for The Change Agent (TCA), a national adult education magazine by and for adult learners and educators. TCA is published by the New England Literacy Resource Center at World Education.

the change agent, issue 58 - finding our voices

In October 2022, Hwiyoung and her classmate Xiuping were published the Creating Communities [read more here]. The most recent issue, Finding Our Voices, was published in February 2023. Two BCNC learners, Hwiyoung Gwon and Zuanping Zeng, served on the Editorial Board alongside BCNC Adult Education teacher Katie Hamel. BCNC Level 1 adult students also collaborated on a writing project about digital equity, featured in February’s issue, page 22-23.

Writing an entire article for a national publication was an exciting challenge for BCNC students. They started by sharing the problems they had encountered communicating online. Using their native languages for support, students crafted an outline introducing the four most common problems and solutions to those problems, and then completed the writing of the article. 

Students were so excited knowing that their writing would be published and distributed across the country. The classes received a small stipend for their work. The classes chose to donate a portion to a local charity and put a portion towards a dim sum celebration. The students hope that their writing can help other adult learners navigate problems with digital communications. 

Digital equity quickly became a top priority for BCNC in 2020 when classes and services went entirely remote. Today, classes are a combination of in-person and online instruction. The digital divide disproportionately affects the population BCNC serves: only 12% of foreign-born U.S. residents who speak a language other than English have high levels of digital problem-solving vs. 36% percent of native-born, native-language residents, according to a 2020 report from the Migration Policy Institute.

BCNC is supported by Comcast to provide digital literacy education in our Adult Education classes. BCNC Adult Education staff are also participating in a Digital Literacy Initiative funded by the City of Boston, Office of Workforce Development. As part of the initiative, staff are working with a WorldEd coach to better integrate educational technology into their curriculum. 

Congratulations to BCNC’s students! We will work hard to help you build digital literacy and digital resilience. We’re so proud to learn with you and raise up your voices.