Six-year-old Sam and his mother, Tabitha, attend a virtual class with Sam’s teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing.
Sam is a bespectacled 6-year-old with a winning smile and a penchant for dinosaurs, as evidenced by the roaring Tyrannosaurus rex on the back of his favorite shirt.
“He loves anything big, and powerful, and scary,” says his mother, Tabitha. Sam grins mischievously as he puts his hands together in a circle — the American Sign Language word for “ball.” He’s telling Tabitha he wants to start his day in the colorful ball pit in a corner of his playroom in their home in central Georgia.
It’s a precious moment of unstructured fun in the day. Soon, he’ll have a virtual lesson with his new teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing, followed by occupational therapy, and speech and language pathology.
Sam has significant disabilities, including cri du chat syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.
He is partially deaf, so he primarily communicates using American Sign Language, or ASL, and mostly uses a wheelchair to get around.
“Sam has a complex case,” says Tabitha, who is no stranger to disability. She used to be a special education teacher, and three of Sam’s seven siblings also have disabilities.
Read more on the original article : https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/npr-news/2024-07-16/as-discrimination-complaints-soar-parents-of-disabled-students-wait-for-help
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