Minimal sensorineural hearing loss impacts education
FACT: 37% of children with only MINIMAL hearing loss fail at least one grade [source: National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)]
Getting ready for back to school? It’s hard to believe August 1st is around the corner.
I feel compelled to share my story:
I remember struggling horribly throughout childhood with single-sided deafness. It was a widely misunderstood condition. Teachers would not enunciate, students were cruel, and I felt as though I poured much of my energy just in to concentrating on what the teachers were saying. I could hear them for the most part, but speech discrimination was a different story, thus, the misunderstanding between me and those around me.
First grade fears
In first grade, my teacher, Mrs. Hollis–I’ll never forget her–had me wear a sign around my neck that said, “Enunciate.” Of course, it was meant to bolster my confidence in that only I knew what the word meant and others around me would have to ask what it meant. And so, my mother fashioned a small-rectangled poster sign with itchy yarn looped around a hole on each end of the sign and had me wrap it around my neck like they do the blue papers at the dentist office. The black Sharpie marker-inked letters were thick and straight: ENUNCIATE. I walked around the elementary school that day with the sign only I knew the definition to.
Granted, this definitely could have set me up for more ridicule, but little me didn’t see it that way. Rather, I beamed with my newfound intellect. Kids walked up to me all day asking what it meant. “It means slow down and speak up,” I replied in my most studious, educated voice. Duh, I added to myself. I laugh when I think about it now. For the most part, it worked; students began to slow down a little and speak more clearly.
Thankfully, we don’t have to wear signs around our necks these days to inform others of hearing loss. Although, now at 37 years old, I still sometimes feel this pressure to understand everything, it is not as bad, because I wear assistive technology.
So this back-to-school season, prepare your child with supplies…and a hearing screen. There are so many options now. The technology is amazing actually!
…And if anyone knows Mrs. Hollis who used to work with Akron Public Schools, share this with her…
Do you have any amazing teachers that you’ll never forget? What made them amazing?
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9796643…and my own first grade experience. Thankfully, no one was traumatized in the making of, or wearing of, the ever-mysterious “Enunciate” sign. Students and faculty alike, instead, were made aware of hearing loss in their schools, and were educated on it. Kudos to the illustrious Mrs. Hollis.
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Kiersten Troutman is the Manager of Marketing and Outreach at HEARINC. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kent State University, and is finishing up her Master of Arts degree in English from The University of Akron. She herself suffers unilateral hearing loss from birth and has a true appreciation for the audiological advances made in the assistive hearing device industry. She has a passion for helping others realize these advances, and has a vision to educate the public on how quality of life can often be improved by simply taking advantage of the current technology available.
Copyright. Kiersten D. Troutman. 2014.
HEARINC.))) 
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