Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Too soon to tell but...

I'm hoping this will be a great year for son! He is hearing impaired and has worn a hearing aid since kindergarten. He has an IEP, which is usually ignored.
He just started our public junior high and has 7 different classes. Teachers have told me they appreciate hearing from me that he has an IEP and what to do at the start of the year, so I emailed them.
His orchestra teacher said he's happy to have my son and will help in anyway! (I doubt they have a lot of hearing impaired kids in the orchestra!). The Spanish teacher emailed me back her interest and eagerness to help.
The English teacher is a great guy and he called me last night at home just to chat how to help!
I mean, wait and see, right? But it's great that they are showing a little interest! He's going to use an FM system (through the IEP) in some classes. He will give them a clip-on mike they will wear, and it will transmit their voice wirelessly through the air into the hearing aid. It hasn't come in yet.

Make sure they know to repeat questions or comments that other students make...

How do we know if something is an acid or base?

The question was when was the Cold War era?

It is positive that they made the effort to contact you! Junior high is grades 7/8? At that age we still only have one teacher except for woodwork/cooking etc. I wish we had specialist maths teachers though.

He did his math homework for today (like 6 problems) and it came home in his backpack. He said the teacher didn't say anything about it.
We've had this happen before where the teacher tells them to turn it in and my hearing-impaired son doesn't hear it! I emailed his friend's mom so we will see...

I would ask the teacher if he could assign him a buddy who sits next to him to nudge him and tell him the teacher said turn in your homework ( this could be a sign for homework or waving homework paper and pointing in the direction of turning it in....and could be done discretely)

It's also possible the teacher never told the kids to turn it in, but has some system set up where they are supposed to know to put it in a certain box or file folder or something... that's how most of my kids' teachers from upper elementary on through high school set up homework return rather than asking for it to be handed in during class.

It sounds like things are going really well - I'm so happy for you and your ds!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thanks so much!
I have high hopes that junior high will be better than grade school. Usually by the end of grade school, the teacher is sick of my son and he of her!! This way, he is with each teacher for only an hour a day!
I really want him to be able to ask, gee, are we supposed to turn homework in after I spent 3 hours on it last night??
I can't follow him around forever, to college, to his job...

Wonderful news.

I wouldn't assume the orchestra hasn't had hearing impaired kids before. DS's marching band has a few hearing impaired students every year. The one I personally know has hearing aids and just loves being part of the band.

As to turning the homework in it's quite possible he missed something. As polarbear said, many teachers have a standard basket or location that homework is always turned into and he just didn't catch that detail. I suggest encouraging your son to try and talk with the teacher directly himself, either through email or after/before school or any other designed office hour time. (Hard to do in the switch between classes.) Email might be a perfect tool for him here. Learning that he can and should go talk to teachers directly when he is confused about something, like why the homework wasn't collected will help immensely in the long term. My experience is it took a lot of convincing to get either of my kids to do this but it was worth it in the long run.

Oh yeah...my son is in tenth grade and he emails his teachers all the time to clear things up or deal with situations. He definitely is comfortable with emailing his teachers. I think all they have to do is have a couple of pleasant email exchanges and they see that it is a great tool. I think an online class he took (in fl you have to take one to graduate so he took PE the summer befor 9th grade) had 90% of your communication with your teacher via email and 10% via phone and that helped him get real comfortable with emailing questions.