This morning, I was fortunate to attend an empowering training session designed by Grainne Boyle at Insights and her team. The session focused on supporting children with hearing impairment in the classroom, a learning barrier that is more common and underrepresented than we may realise.
I learned a great deal, and some of my biggest takeaways were:
- Child assessments need to be conducted in settings that are fully equipped with specialist equipment.
- If you ask a child with hearing loss, “did you hear?”, their automatic response is often “yes,” so there is a need to build resilience for them to be honest.
- The power of ensuring we face the student when talking.
- The combination of hearing and seeing (visuals) in learning is a perfect combination for all children.
- Children struggling to hear will often show it in their eyes.
- Allowing students time to have downtime, turn off their devices, and ‘zone out’ is vital.
- Classroom acoustics play a vital part in enabling students.
Hilal Kara Ali, who flew in from Misk Schools in Riyadh, talked us through the terms Deaf and Hard of Hearing, different types and levels of hearing loss, how to read an audiogram, and how to identify and support children with interventions, accommodations, and recommendations.
We also heard an empowering talk from Ensaf Saleem, an Audiologist and specialist in Assistive Listening Devices from Vienna Hearing, who demonstrated various pieces of technology, including microphones and speakers, to amplify speech and enable student engagement. We also had the opportunity to pose questions to Sarah Darwish, a specialist paediatric Audiologist in Dubai.
The event was supported by Dubai British School Jumeirah Park, and one of its outcomes is the creation of a social media platform for discussion. Please get in touch with me if you would like to join the conversation.
For more information about Insights Psychology, click the link below: