Beyond logistics
For parents, there’s much more to learning a child has hearing loss than finding the right accommodations for that child. “When parents find out at the newborn hearing screening [that a child has hearing loss], they may go through a range of emotions before they get to the most important question: ‘How am I going to give this child what they need to thrive?’” said Lesa Carter, educational consultant for students with hearing loss for Mustang Public Schools. Whether a child experiences hearing loss from birth or later in life, the communication options available to them and their families are numerous and potentially overwhelming. Carter shared that, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 90 percent of children born deaf are born to hearing parents, who may have little to no experience with the varied options available to their child. Making what feels like a lifetime decision for a child can be daunting. “Some kids flourish with cochlear implants, some with hearing aids, some with American Sign Language or the cultural influence of the Deaf community,” said Carter. The bottom line, says Carter, is children need language in some form as early as possible because it’s the foundation for learning, reading, relationships and so much more. Consulting a child’s pediatrician, local resources like the Oklahoma School for the Deaf, public schools, parent support groups and organizations like Hearts for Hearing can help in gathering information and perspective, as well as preparing a child for school. “Since the newborn screening protocol became law in Oklahoma in 2000, and updated in 2006, children are getting hearing aids at just a few months old, giving them greater access to sound and speech,” said Carter. “Just as important, children with profound hearing loss whose parents sign to them in infancy can make their first sign around 7 months old. All of this leads to a better foundation for learning.”
In Edmond Public Schools, the district’s 90 students who have hearing loss use varied and oftentimes multiple communication tools. The district once offered an immersive deaf education program with one elementary teacher for all students with hearing loss, but Nancy Goosen, newly retired as director of special services for EPS, said when she joined the district 22 years ago, the program led to disparities so she advocated to mainstream students. “I do not want to dismiss the advantages of the full immersion model of a deaf education program like the Oklahoma School for the Deaf where they have a stronger program with teachers at every grade level,” said Goosen. “It just was not working for us. After meeting with the students, I believed they needed the opportunity to achieve deeper levels of learning in a regular education environment with their same grade level peers than placed in one special education classroom with multiple grade levels. Of course, if any student needs additional special education support, the IEP team makes that placement decision on an individual basis.” Now EPS focuses on meeting students’ needs by providing individualized accommodations, like deaf interpreters, sound field systems in all classrooms, personal FM units that connect those systems to students’ receivers in their hearing aids or cochlear implants and deaf education teachers and coordinators to work with students, teachers and parents. As students with hearing loss prepare for life after high school, Lisa Barnum, deaf educator with EPS, helps them learn to advocate for themselves, understand what accommodations are available to them in the workplace, college or career tech programs and how to request those services. “Our students should be viewed as a regular education student first,” said Goosen, “and then as an individual with a disability who needs accommodations or other types of special education services based on their unique needs to benefit from instruction and be academically successful.”
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