{"id":10006,"date":"2023-12-14T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/?p=10006"},"modified":"2025-03-24T13:23:36","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T23:23:36","slug":"2023-students-with-hearing-and-visual-impairments-share-holiday-wishes-with-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/2023-students-with-hearing-and-visual-impairments-share-holiday-wishes-with-santa\/","title":{"rendered":"Students with hearing and visual impairments share holiday wishes with Santa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018AIEA \u2014 Santa Claus made a stop in \u2018Aiea on Thursday for a special event aimed at giving students with hearing and visual impairments a chance to experience the holiday tradition of sitting on Santa\u2019s lap and sharing their Christmas wishes with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over 150 students from schools statewide participated in the 31st annual \u201cDeaf Santa\u201d event at Pearlridge Center and were able to converse with Santa using American Sign Language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt makes them feel like anybody else,\u201d Angel Ramos, principal of the Hawai\u2018i School for the Deaf and the Blind. \u201cSeeing people can talk to Santa, our deaf students \u2013 when they go to him in person \u2013 can communicate with him and ask for their Christmas gifts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Students with visual impairments participated in the \u201cSanta Cane To Town\u201d event, where they rode a holiday train around the mall and went to the movies with special headsets that provided audio descriptions of the movie \u201cTrolls Band Together.\u201d The students also had an opportunity to pose for photos with Santa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The events were organized in partnership with the HIDOE Office of Student Support Services, Pearlridge Center and the ASL program at Kapi\u2018olani Community College. Southwest Airlines sponsored airfare for neighbor island students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Kids need representation,\u00a0they need inclusion, they need to feel like they can relate to Santa and know that their wishes are being seen and registered,\u201d said Jan Fried, an American Sign Language professor at Kapi\u2018olani Community College, who has helped organize the event over the past three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The event also featured holiday-themed musical performances from school groups and a magic show in American Sign Language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s amazing and every year it\u2019s just great to be a part of something like this,\u201d said Maka Ka\u2018ahanui-Kuala, who flew in from K\u012bhei with her husband Jerome Kuala and 3-year-old son Atlas for the event. \u201cHe always looks forward to this time of year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Deaf Santa 2023\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/896387650?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018AIEA \u2014 Santa Claus made a stop in \u2018Aiea on Thursday for a special event aimed at giving students with hearing and visual impairments a chance to experience the holiday tradition of sitting on Santa\u2019s lap and sharing their Christmas wishes with him. Over 150 students from schools statewide participated in the 31st annual \u201cDeaf [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","wp_popup_display_lightbox":0,"wp_popup_suppress":"","wp_popup_trigger":"","wp_popup_trigger_amount":0,"wp_popup_disable_on_mobile":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":21,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Chanel Honda","author_link":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/author\/chanel-hondak12-hi-us\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":21,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":21,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":306,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":21,"category_count":306,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 05:11:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"post_status","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiipublicschools.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}