Hearing in the Classroom: An Assistive Device for Hard of Hearing Teachers
by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A hard of hearing teacher wrote:
It seems to me that loop systems and FM systems are better for students than for teachers. How would either benefit a teacher? It seems that those systems are set up to have one person (usually the teacher) wear the microphone and the sound gets to the students. But how does that work when there are 25 kids and the teacher is hard of hearing?
This is a basic problem with assistive devices such as room loops and FM systems. They are made to go from one hearing person to one or more hard of hearing people, not from many hearing people to one hard of hearing person like you need.
If you had a small classroom, it is possible to add 2 or 3 microphones scattered around the room all feeding into a loop system for example—but the students still must pass the microphones around for this to be truly effective.
One solution (and one that was specifically designed for a hard of hearing teacher by the way) is to use a PockeTalker, neckloop and a super-directional microphone. I have found this combination is quite effective. Typically, I use mine at noisy conferences, but it also works well in quiet situations as well. You might want to try it and see how well it works for you.
If you are going to use this system with your hearing aids, you need hearing aids with t-coils. Then you need a PockeTalker, a neckloop and the super-directional microphone I love.
If you don’t wear hearing aids, you can skip the neckloop and add earbuds instead. I often do this as it works wonderfully well for my particular hearing loss.
Note: when you switch your hearing aids to t-coil mode, much of the background noise in the classroom is blocked out. You only hear what enters the directional microphone. Compared to just using your hearing aids, the difference is quite dramatic.
August 18th, 2010 at 6:38 am
Hi, I am an adult student who is considering a teaching career but was a bit ‘scared’ due to my hearing loss(ca. 30% mid/high tones due to perforated eardrums and neural damage = tinnitus as an infant). I hav tried hearing aids but found that they amplified background noise as well. I hav trouble hearing with background noise and the softly-spoken sounds like “s”, “f”, and “th”. Words that rhyme also give me trouble. This site has excellent advice and makes me feel much more confident about teaching. I have coped well to date (top 10% of students in my courses worldwide + published essays in English, History and Classics). I am now doing my Honours in English Literature. I have experience in Science, Library work, and archiving. My family are really good with my hearing loss, but sometimes we all have to laugh at my mistakes! I used to be embarrassed about my loss as a youth, but now I am just up-front about it with people and they normally speak more clearly. Great site!
January 17th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Jamie, I don’t think you should let a hearing loss get in the way of your career path. I am a Senior Elementary Ed. major with a profound hearing loss. I student teach at the moment and only struggle occasionally. The good thing about working with the students is they use a lot of body language and hand written communication that it makes teaching easier. If you are passionate about teaching than I think you should not let anything stop you.
October 21st, 2011 at 1:57 am
I use a phonak fm system that allows me to have 9 microphones wirelessly connected to it (the main little mic, and then 8 portable microphones). It works great for me. A hearing loss is a hearing loss though, so I still need to rely on my speechreading skills to be sure to catch important words
LM