Community comes together and learns sign language in order to communicate with young neighbor

Learning Sign Language
(Image credit: Inti Ocon/AFP/Getty Images)

This is what being a good neighbor is all about.

Glenda and Raphael Savitz moved to Newton, Massachusetts, a little over two years ago, and soon welcomed a daughter, Samantha. During her newborn screenings, doctors discovered that Samantha was deaf, and her parents immediately began learning American Sign Language. As Samantha got older, her neighbors would see her using sign language with her parents, and it sparked an idea: What if they learned ASL, too?

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.