By Emily Jones

Due to COVID-19, most classrooms will look different this fall. Some will exist in person with social distancing measures in place, while others will be entirely virtual. Many will be a hybrid of both face-to-face and online instruction. As always, there will still be students ready to learn and caring teachers eager to take on the curriculum.

Of course, some students in this year’s online classrooms are D/deaf and hard of hearing. They rely heavily on visual cues to learn effectively. Therefore, it is important for teachers to consider how to make sound visual in their virtual classrooms this year: 

Be mindful of the children with hearing loss in your class, if any. You may receive a report from the school about children in your class who require special educational accommodations, Individual Education Plans (IEP), or 504 Plans. As an additional measure, you can ask your new pupils to self-identify as D/deaf or hard of hearing or notify you if they have any unique communication preferences.

Connect with the parents of children with hearing loss to discuss and plan accommodations as needed. This may be accomplished in formal IEP or 504 meetings. Prepare questions for the meeting such as:

1. What has worked in classrooms in the past?

2. What has not worked in classrooms in the past?

3. What resources do you have? (Closed captioning services, interpreters, etc.)

Integrate the answers as best as possible in your virtual classroom.

Optimize your camera’s position. Some hard of hearing children are able to manage their hearing loss by reading lips. It is critical that you keep your face clearly in the upper two-thirds of the screen to facilitate lip reading and visually indicate when you are speaking at all times. Do not turn around and talk when your back is to the screen. Students with hearing loss (and typical hearing students alike) will miss the visual cues of sound and may not hear what you are saying if you’re talking facing away from the screen. Keeping your face in the upper two-thirds of the screen also allows for closed captions to remain fully visible at the bottom of the screen.

Ensure that your virtual classroom environment is well-lit. This will make it easier for pupils to see your face and understand what you are saying. When I film my educational hearing loss videos, I face a window that is not in direct sunlight (soft light). This enables viewers to easily see my face without harsh shadows.

Integrate captions properly. Closed captions provide text that corresponds to speech, making your lessons more visual for students with hearing loss. The quality and availability of captions depend on your video conferencing platform. Google Meet has surprisingly accurate, automatic closed captions, while Zoom has yet to integrate the feature. If you are using Zoom or another platform without automatic captioning, you can make this critical tool part of your virtual classroom with any of the following resources: 

1. State, district, and school resources: TypeWell, Cart, Speech Cloud

2. Personal resources (require another electronic device such as a smartphone or tablet): Transcription apps such as Otter.ai, Ava, Speechy, Live Transcribe (Microsoft)

Write out important information, like deadlines, test dates, and diagram content, to display during the lesson as you would in a physical classroom. I recommend using a dark-colored marker on a whiteboard behind you or next to you. It is important to realize that children with hearing loss will not always capture what you say, so making your own notes available to them is incredibly beneficial.

Growing up with a hearing loss, I can’t count how many times I wrote down spelling words I couldn’t remember learning because they didn’t exist on the list. I didn’t always understand the spelling words the teacher was saying. I also sometimes showed up without my homework complete because I missed the deadline without visual cues.

Remember to follow up. Check in on your hard of hearing students periodically to ensure that they are sufficiently understanding the class material. Homework and test results will be a good indicator. Do not hesitate to adjust as you feel is best for the student.

All in all, tips for teachers of D/deaf and hard of hearing students focus on the key principle of “visual sound.” Please practice them and consider other ways you can make sound visual in your classroom. In doing so, you’ll help students with hearing loss and typical hearing alike. 

As a teacher, you are responsible for a lot of students of varying abilities and the responsibility can be overwhelming at times. However, also remember that you are in a unique position to positively influence many students’ lives. You’ve got this. You are going to have a great year! 

Emily Jones is a hard of hearing YouTube personality on a mission to increase hearing loss awareness. This article has been adapted from her July 2020 YouTube video about teaching students with hearing loss.