Parents With Disabilities Face Extra Hurdles With Kids' Remote Schooling

Chantelly Manzanares grades her daughter’s spelling test. credit: Kristin Gourlay

I reported this story for NPR: The Americans with Disabilities Act says schools have to help not just students but parents with disabilities, too, like making sure deaf or blind parents can communicate during parent-teacher conferences. But what happens when kids are learning at home? That's uncharted territory.

Behind the story: As the parent of a child learning remotely (as of February 2021—hopefully that will change soon!) I had never considered how different my experience is because I can hear. Even while I’m working in my office, I can pop my head around the corner and hear what a teacher is asking my son to do, and whether or not he’s doing it. I learned about a family in my own community whose mother was looking for volunteers to read to her children over Zoom. She is deaf; her children are hearing. Their first language is American Sign Language, which is completely different from English. And while her children have become fluent in English, the mother has not. So she wants to make sure her kids experience spoken English while they’re learning remotely. They’re not getting the same experience at home as they would in an English and sound-rich environment like a school building. What’s more, schools are typically focused on helping students with disabilities; they aren’t always considering the parents. So, I asked this members of this family to tell me about their experience. New facets of the pandemic just keep emerging.