ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For the most part, the driver’s education class hosted at Ann Arbor Academy looks, feels and sounds like any other.
There are diagrams showing student drivers how to avoid collisions, videos featuring a calm voice explaining the dangers of things like hydroplaning, and students who await individual driving lessons.
But a few things in a class hosted recently make the academy’s unlike the rest.
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“We try to give a little more breaks. I try to make more jokes,” said Suhail Bilbeisi, lead instructor at Ann Arbor Driving School.
The driving school runs a segment-one class at the academy specially geared toward teens and adults with autism, who are neurodiverse, or have ADHD or another learning disability.
The need for this kind of class is growing, and Ann Arbor Academy, a private K-12 institution for children in that student group, hosted a handful of such classes over the last several years, said Meredith Schindler, executive director.
There is a years-old waiting list of well over 100.
She said the academy had three sessions in two years and hopes to host another in September, depending on Bilbeisi’s availability.
“In Michigan, for better or worse, you really have to be able to drive,” Schindler said. “Really, almost everybody can drive. But many people just need more support as they’re learning. It’s such a life skill.”
Learning to drive opens up employment possibilities, she said. “People with disabilities are chronically underemployed. They make less than their peers, their jobs, and a lot of it is just transportation, self-determination, being in charge of your own (access). So, it’s such an equity issue.”
In Michigan, there are two segments of driver’s ed required for minors. The first must be completed before students can drive supervised with a learner’s permit.
Adults do not have to take it. In his class, however, Bilbeisi, 32, said he had a student older than him, which he never thought would happen in a segment-one course.
Kayla Wade, 19, said she wanted to take the class “because I want to learn how to drive” but wasn’t able to prior. She said the setup suited her.
“I asked my mom, and my mom signed me up for this class. But what was helpful was learning the right things to do when driving,” Wade said. “I feel like it’s slow-paced. The right pace.”
“I just love to do this,” she added before a driving lesson. “I like to drive.”
The class’s setting is looser, Bilbeisi said. Its sizes are smaller — capped at 12 instead of the state’s maximum of 36.
It’s more hours and more drives, he said, with 30 hours of class instead of 24 and eight 45-minute drives instead of six at an hour long.
“Sometimes a student will bring up something that’s a little bit not quite relevant. It’s fine,” he said. “I just try to keep him on track. But if he wants to talk about Star Wars for a minute, just let him, you know what I mean? That’s why we have the extra time, so we can make sure we still get through the material.”
It’s that flexibility and array of accommodations that, Schindler said, make the driver’s ed class so special. Classes can be sensory friendly or quieter. Students can have things read out loud to them and the setting is accepting to help build confidence.
There also are no residency requirements to sign up, she said.
When in session, classes meet for two hours Monday to Friday. At $1,050 per student, Schindler said it was a little more costly than standard driver’s classes but reflected the extra instructional and practice driving time.
“There’s a lot of people out there that need this, and there just isn’t anything else like it in the area,” Schindler said. “So, we wanted to just continue to be a home for this class.”
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