Learing About Students with Hearing Impairments

Students with hearing impairments, similar to those with other impairments, have varying levels of hearing loss and experience life in different ways. For some students, the help of a small hearing aid can mean that they are living life like any other typical student. For others, they will remain in a silent world living life through all of their other senses. We as teachers need to have an understanding that even though these students cannot hear, they are still capable of doing amazing things.

One aspect of teaching to a student with a hearing impairment that I never really thought about was the environmental factors around them. I get so caught up with the typical content, process, and product aspect of teaching that I often forget about the outside factors that have a huge impact on the student’s learning. In an article by Stacie Heckendorf (2009), she discusses the environmental considerations that need to be adapted depending on the student’s level of hearing loss. For example, think about everything in a classroom that could cause the noise level to get louder and louder. Other students could be talking, doors could be shutting, desks could be moving, air and cooling systems could be going off, and let’s not forget about the coughing and blowing of the nose that students do every day. For students with a hearing loss, each one of these noises could potentially mask the sound of the teacher’s speech restricting the student from focusing on the lesson (Heckendorf, 2009).

As always, I am thinking about how I can help the students in my classroom. One of my main concerns is always about affording assistive technology for the students if the school district cannot. I found a video on YouTube that demonstrated something simple that could be used in class for students with a mild hearing impairment. This video demonstrates the use of an FM system and microphone in order to project speech loud enough for the student to hear. After watching the video, I then went online to see how much this would cost in case I had to purchase it on my own. Although some FM systems were highly expensive, I noticed that there were basic models for less than $60. I think this is very reasonable especially since all students could benefit from this and not just those with a loss of hearing. One other note that they made in the video was for the teacher to always repeat what the students said in class. We know that there are those students who like to talk very soft so we need to make sure we repeat answers and questions so that everyone can hear them. So check out the video and let me know what you think!

Wink Inc. (2015, July 24). Hearing Loss in the Classroom [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln8NHzVfJkQ