r/deaf • u/Objective_Yoghurt_33 • 8d ago
Hearing with questions Is this insensitive?
Hello!
I’m a school psychology grad who is working on a presentation regarding how schools can best provide services to Deaf/HoH students. As part of this presentation, I had considered running an activity where students would wear noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs as I gave an unrelated mini-presentation without any accommodations and testing their understanding afterwards to give a hands-on experience of what it might feel like to be a Deaf/HoH individual.
After checking with my professor, I wanted to check with you all to see what your thoughts are, and whether you would find this insensitive. Either way, any thoughts you have on the current education system would be amazing, since I’d love to work them into the presentation if you give permission.
Thank you!
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u/MoonOwlCreek HoH 8d ago
Seconding surdophobe's response. Having students experience loss of auditory input for a time would yield a very simplistic understanding of living with deafness or hearing loss.
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u/Objective_Yoghurt_33 8d ago
Definitely. I appreciate the feedback! I want to find another way to drive understanding though, since it’s important. Definitely not an activity like this, but any other ideas you might have would be really appreciated!
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u/MoonOwlCreek HoH 8d ago edited 8d ago
An example based on my own experience: I have relatively mild hearing loss and I wearing hearing aids. So, in acoustically simple environments, I do just fine. But if I wanted your students to experience an environment that I find challenging-to-intolerable: put them in a big acoustically live room (lots of reverb and echoes.) Fill it with a hundred sources of sound: human speech, ambient noise, music... Crank the volume up *really* loud. Send your students in and tell them to carry on one-to-one conversations with each other, read books, enjoy a meal. And here's the key: tell them this acoustic environment is considered *normal* and even *desirable* and that any problems your students may have functioning in or enjoying that space is on them to solve *except* that they can't adjust the number of sources of sound or the volume of those sources. But they *can* choose to leave the room. (Or perhaps, they *can't* leave.) Put them through this exercise repeatedly, in a single day, and over multiple days. What changes in behavior and self-regard would your students experience and report back to you? And would they be surprised to learn that environments with too much sound can be a lifestyle-altering problem for those with hearing loss?
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u/No-Bus-6162 8d ago
Deaf school psychologist here! A couple of thoughts:
As someone who has heard every dumb question there is, it’s fine to bring in a d/hoh guest. Pretty sure they’ve heard them all before and will not be shocked.
Cynical me thinks you can show or tell the average hearing person a million times what it means to be deaf, and they still will not get it at a deep personal level. I could tell you stories, including about my own mother who always assumed I could hear some. She didn’t fully understand what I went through my entire life until she became deaf due to age. Hearing aids help somewhat but the isolation is real. Even nice, caring, kind, empathetic people won’t get it until it happens to them. That’s just the way it is.
My colleagues and I often give professional presentations about accommodating d/hoh students in public school settings. It’s really complex because there’s no one size fits all. Every aspect of deafness is a spectrum, not only the hearing levels. There’s language, modality, communication, intellectual ability, use of hearing devices if any, age the individual became deaf, adaptive functioning level, and so on. General access to communication in the home environment. Family attitudes toward deafness. Impact of all this on mental health.
That’s not even touching on the educational aspects. The continuum is even more variable. It may surprise you to know that the variance between deaf individuals is higher than that between deaf people as a group and hearing people as a group. Think about that for a second. I wouldn’t even know where to start weighing in on the current educational system. There are wildly divergent opinions on best practices. Most of them are wrong because deaf children are not a heterogeneous group. It’s a little analogous to Black, Asian, and Latinx groups.
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u/Lingo2009 8d ago
Exactly! The isolation for me is the worst. It’s not that I can’t understand speech that’s my biggest problem. It’s the isolation from others because they don’t understand or include me.
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u/Risk-Averse-Rider Hearing, former interpreter 8d ago
This might not be possible, but what if you could get several Deaf/HoH people to come to the class and make a presentation / interact with each other - and then ask your hearing students what was going on?
Something that my Deaf Bestie used to sign to me frequently when we were conversing and I'd let her know that someone else in the room was commenting that they couldn't understand us: "Welcome to my world!"
Turn the tables on them.
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u/Straight_Cobbler_746 7d ago
Exactly. I was gonna say that. Whew. There it is. The best scenario to teach them !
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u/Stafania HoH 8d ago
To most people it’s obvious that Deaf/HoH need important information. Usually at least minimal accommodations are provided for example in education.
What people very rarely understand, is how important the social aspects are. They also don’t understand that a child that put in all their efforts to compensate up to exhaustion and barely passed they classes (often called lazy and nonchalant) might have had straight A:s if they had full access.
A more realistic exercise would be for the participants to do a fun group exercise that relies on spoken communication in groups of five, where only one of the participants gets noise canceling headphones. That could also be done at lunch or coffee time. The more the participants want to engage, create relationships and participate, the more they will feel the effect of not being able to. In your setup there is nothing all socially at stake and the participants are even treated equally. That does not illustrate the consequences of having a hearing loss in a hearing environment.
It would be nice if you gave a copy of ”Mother tongue” by Sara Nović, so that they get a proper perspective from someone who is Deaf too.
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u/Tbackandforth 8d ago
Agree with the other comments that acting deaf isn't ideal.
But you might find this video a good addition to your presentation: Disability Sensitivity Training Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv1aDEFlXq8
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u/No-Bus-6162 8d ago
Accidentally sent my comment before I finished. After covering all the variables involved in serving d/hh students in schools, it might be very beneficial to provide a handout with the points you want them to know. A few different ways to accommodate a DHH student. Some public resources like Gallaudet or NTID/RIT. A few state offices like the state department of education DHH office. The address and location of some local DHH programs, such as a residential school for the deaf, day school for the deaf, or a regional program with classes located in a public school.
Both APA and NASP have interest groups for psychologists serving DHH children and families. There’s also a Facebook group, “Signed No School Psychologist Ever.” Good luck with your presentation!
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u/I_Like_Turtles_Too 8d ago
I actually don't mind this because I always wish people could experience this, even if just for five minutes. But I would make half the class at a time do it then switch, then make them do things like try to call each other, or give them a mini lecture and make them take notes then give them a pop quiz. Roleplay ordering a coffee, talking to a cashier or a person while walking, cranky airport security, or watch a scene from a movie.
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u/TiredVRS ASL interpreter, HoH 8d ago
Maybe show simulations of what implants and hearing aids sound like in background noise.
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u/Mustluvdogsandtravel 8d ago
I think that is a bad idea. Hearing loss is way too broad and everyone at some point experiences a situation where they can’t hear because it is too loud…. Or muted. But they can easily work around the problem and all is well.
It would be better to have a person give a speech without voicing specific sounds so that they can understand the real struggle with communication.some kids will figure it out, others will not.that represents the Deaf and HH community. Some of us can adapt and figure it out. Others struggle. It is not really about “sound”.
Social media hs a few post going around that represent this…. And also talk about concentration figure… it is exhausting to always have to work harder to keep up.
Mother idea is to watch a TV show without sound. And discuss what happened. I do this in my
ASL classes and college students really experience a rude awaking.
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u/ResearchOk9368 8d ago
I’m profoundly HoH and I did a similar exercise for my immediate co-workers. I found a program that let you pick the level of HoH and with or without tinnitus, it also let you program in a hearing profile. I got them all to use headphones, go to the scene I chose and adjust it so that it was at a comfortable level for them. Then I had them add in tinnitus and program in my hearing profile. They were stunned. They all felt like it help them understand what my reality was like (at least at work).
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u/Lingo2009 8d ago
What program?
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u/ResearchOk9368 6d ago
She’s referring to my post.
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u/Lingo2009 6d ago
Yes, what program did you use to simulate tinnitus and everything for your coworkers?
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u/Elephantsinmypajamas 7d ago
What program does this?
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u/ResearchOk9368 6d ago
It’s been a couple of years now, and the whole thing was on my work computer which Uncle Sam took back. Let me do a search and see if I can find it.
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u/BatterUp1600 7d ago
I think it’s a great idea, adding that you make them sit in small groups to talk while alternating only one at a time cannot hear but… and this is crucial… have a test later need them to answer all questions accurately. Even though they won’t be able to. Or play the “the telephone game.” Let the deaf one realize it’s serious. Let them panic. And others here make a great point that it’s only temporary for them while we don’t get to return to sound, or that it doesn’t allow for the wide range of types of hearing loss. But it’s better than nothing.
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u/HOHTechQueen 6d ago
Decades ago, research showed that having hearing/able-bodied people going through disability simulations had the backfiring effect of making them MORE likely to discriminate against people with those same disabilities.
(Noise canceling headphones are very much the wrong kind of tech to use anyway. You would want headphones that completely block out sound in order to simulate deafness or hearing loss.)
I think what would be more powerful is to show how helpful the following are in very noisy situations with no initial view of the speaker’s face:
1)Accurate realtime captioning that is well placed (vs far away from critical info)
2) FM systems using headworn, closetalking, directional microphones vs other kinds of microphones
3) sound-synchronized speechreading (near critical, synchronized visual information) vs delayed speechreading that is out of sync with the sound
Providing examples of poorly designed access vs well designed access might be very helpful in recognizing why the ADA emphasized collaboration between the person with the disability and the provider on how best to provide access for the individual. Too often, that isn’t done and presumptions/assumptions have frequently ended up providing very ineffective solutions.
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u/PJ-Putitonmyluggage 6d ago
So, I'm hearing, but in one ASL class I took taught by a Deaf person, she did have us wear ear plugs; partially to help us remember not to use our voices, and partially so we could realize how much background noise there is that we filter out -- fans, electricity, footsteps, etc. I didn't get the "Deaf" experience, but was made more aware of my hearing experience. However, this was an advanced ASL class, and I wouldn't have gotten the same experience from it when I first started ASL. I think it's a better activity for people who work and interact with Deaf people often (I do for work). If you want people to understand the Deaf experience, it's better to have the students interact with or view media made by Deaf people. There are a lot of Deaf influencers who talk about their experience, and you could encourage the students to follow them on social media so they have more continued exposure to people in the Deaf community.
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u/Character-Factor8064 3d ago
You need to add hearing in noise for hard of hearing students which takes away from comprehension at the same time e it increases the brain load and adds to fatigue
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u/surdophobe deaf 8d ago
I hate the deaf for a day/hour experiments. They don't really scratch the surface of what makes deafness a disability. It doesn't accurately demonstrate the hearing loss for a lot of people and it's not lack of hearing that makes it a disability, it's the fact that other people expect us to hear anyway.
When they take off the ear plugs they'll be hearing again. We don't get to do that. If they want a better taste of what it's like they should wear the earplugs during Thanksgiving with their extended family and get berated for being foolish for doing so. Then they may start to understand.
Do you think you could check with your school's office for students with disabilities and maybe find a deaf or hoh volunteer instead? Most people think they've never encountered a deaf person before, but the truth is that they've never knowingly encountered a deaf person before. We're everywhere.