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Bridging technology gap at home critical to student success

SUE GILLESPIE CONTRIBUTOR

If you’re reading this and you have school-aged children, you have likely experienced the hair-tugging frustration of technology the past 15 months as your kids struggle to adjust to online learning.

Now take a moment to imagine the challenges students living in low-income communities are facing.

Many are living in small, busy apartments with multiple family members. Many of these families can’t afford a computer or a webcam even if they could afford the reliable connection needed for video learning — and many parents are having to choose between putting food on the table and an internet connection so their children can continue learning.

This means food insecurity is also often a considerable issue, and we all know how hard it is to concentrate when we’re hungry. To make matters more challenging, many teenagers must take on additional work to help contribute to the family’s bills. That’s time away from learning.

These are the challenges faced by many of the students we support at Pathways to Education Canada, whether it’s in Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside or rural Quebec. When it comes to access to technology, what was once seen as a luxury is now evolving into a basic right — a necessity for effective learning.

So, it is not surprising that for students caught in the cycle of poverty, the high school dropout rate can reach up to 50 per cent in some communities.

Traditionally, we have supported students to overcome the barriers they face by providing meal vouchers and access to reliable technology, and offering face-to-face tutoring and mentoring. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made that more challenging, and threatened to widen the gap for students from low-income communities — something that could have sobering ramifications on their ability to graduate from high school.

We’re doing all we can to help bridge the gap. Our staff have been staying connected with students and their families to respond to their immediate needs, and we’ve adapted our programming to provide online tutoring and mentoring.

We’ve even developed a lowbandwidth video conferencing tool so students with limited internet access can stay connected to Pathways staff.

This is graduation season, the second one we will celebrate virtually. And despite all the challenges over the past 15 months, we have a renewed sense of optimism moving forward into the recovery period.

We’re grateful for our supporters who make this possible — they know this is a major societal inequity that has the potential to set back an entire generation of young people if we don’t act now. And they know that organizations like Pathways are a part of Canada’s economic and workforce recovery solution.

Sue Gillespie is the president and CEO of Pathways to Education Canada, a national, charitable organization working to break the cycle of poverty through education.

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2021-06-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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