The majority of itinerant teachers of the deaf/hard of hearing have caseloads of 10-25 students in 10 different buildings, with 85% of students being served 1:1 or in small groups, and about 30% of caseloads being students who are ‘deaf-plus’. Fewer new educators of...
Too Many Students to Serve?
Learning Progress Equal to Peers?
Students with hearing loss have less access to communication. This will result in a slower pace of learning and fewer gains in academic knowledge unless appropriate services and supports are provided. At the end of the school year it is important to ask whether your...
We Want Him to be “Normal”…
Everyone wants students to have a good experience in school. Often part of this desire by families is for their child to not feel singled out as ‘different.’ While it is true that our students are just ‘normal kids who happen to be hard of hearing or deaf’, it is also...
Early Intervention Materials on Tap
Who are our babies with hearing loss? Fewer than 15% of the babies identified by Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) programs have bilateral profound hearing loss (deaf) and more than 50% have mild bilateral or unilateral hearing loss. The distribution of...
Tailored Assessment for Students with Hearing Loss: Identifying Needs to Support Eligibility for Specialized Instruction
A recent US court case1 made it clear that students with hearing loss must receive an eligibility assessment that identifies areas of suspected need secondary to hearing loss must be evaluated with sufficient intensity to satisfy in depth evaluation. The special...
Reading Comprehension Delays – An Expectation for Most Students with Hearing Loss
What does it mean to teach kids how to read text effectively?1 Initially, it means making certain that they can decode so proficiently that they can decode the words without much conscious attention. Texts are going to place increasing demands on students’ linguistic...
Hearing Loss and Sarcasm: The Problem is Conceptual NOT Perceptual
Individuals with hearing loss often have difficulty detecting and/or interpreting sarcasm. These difficulties can be as severe as they are for persons with autism spectrum disorder and challenges often continue into adulthood 1,2. Even children with good language and...
Only One Ear CAN be a Big Deal
About 25-30% of children identified by universal newborn hearing screening have hearing loss in only one ear. This prevalence increases with age to about 1 ½ -2% of the school-age population. Students with unilateral hearing loss are at 10 times the risk for...
“Special Considerations” and LRE for Students who are DHH
Early January 2019 While the educational prognosis for students with hearing loss has never been as promising as it is now, we continue to have students who are deaf or hard of hearing who have not been identified, or who have not received intervention, prior to...
Self-Advocacy Skill Development is Required for Full Participation in the Classroom
December 2018 Students do not know what they didn’t hear because they didn’t hear it – yet they are held accountable for receiving and fully understanding this information. Full participation in the classroom requires that a student recognize when a communication...
