Teacher-Research: Deaf Students in the Classroom

Steven O’Neil

Foundations of Teaching for Single-Subject

EDUG-524-01

Dr. Hittenberger

October 16, 2023

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Abstract

Educators across the United States are likely, at one point or another to encounter students with

special needs in their classroom, one of these being deaf or hard-of-hearing students. As a result

of this, educators should be prepared to handle students with this disability to ensure that they

have all their resources available and know some of their struggles in order to incorporate all

their students into the classroom effectively and help them feel valued. Even by today’s

standards, there are issues that are still prevalent within the deaf community, as many people are

unaware of their struggles or even their culture. This lack of knowledge can unknowingly hurt

students actively within the community, and there are many different stances that people within

the deaf community that are held very firmly. In addition to this, throughout most of human

history, it has not painted individuals with any amount of hearing loss as legitimate members of

society due to their inability to do certain tasks. It has left many deaf people on the outside of

their communities looking in. Also, many deaf people have been overlooked and given little

accommodations as it is considered an extra expense that is not worth the time of businesses and

schools. There are many prevalent issues within the last twenty years of students who are deaf or

have moderate hearing loss that are still seen within our court system today. It is the aim of this

paper to look in depth at some of the stories of deaf or hard-of-hearing students to understand

their stories and struggles better. It also aims to better understand how educators can best create

accommodations for their students to ensure that a deaf student can learn just as effectively as a

hearing student.
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An Introduction to Deaf and Hard of Hearing

It is sometimes challenging to decipher the many medical terms that make up what it

means to be hearing impaired. Many terms have been coined to identify those with hearing loss.

Some of these terms include “hearing impaired,” “hard of hearing,” “deaf,” or even “deafened.”

Given that so many different terms can be used, it is understandable that many individuals may

find it difficult to navigate and understand the differences between all the terms. It is essential to

understand the differences as they can implicate different stages of deafness, and in some cases,

some of the terms carry a heavier connotation of being negative.

According to the University of Washington (2022), the term “hearing impaired” is often

described as people with any degree of hearing loss from mild to severe. This term is typically

used as an umbrella to capture the many different types of hearing loss. However, it does not

always identify specifically the amount of hearing loss an individual may experience. As such,

using the term to describe someone as “deaf” is typically referenced as someone who has

experienced severe or even total loss of hearing. Typically, individuals who are classified as

“deaf” are someone who likely to have complete hearing loss, and few auditory tools can be

provided to help the individual hear fully. Someone who is “hard of hearing” will be seen with

hearing aids or other adequate means to help assist them in speech. In contrast, deafened usually

refers to a person who experienced hearing loss as they grew into an adult. Whereas someone

who is deaf versus deafened might share similar hearing struggles, there are still many

differences between the two.

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It is also critical to understand that not all individuals who experience any level of

hearing loss willingly choose to have hearing aids, cochlear implants, or any other listening

device. some individuals prefer the method of using sign language. Others prefer a mix between

the two of having hearing aids but using any level of sign language to help communicate, as they

might find it too challenging to vocalize their words. Additionally, it could be a personal

preference or even a resistance to the modern advances of technology that seek to change the

deaf community.

In order to be classified as deaf by the standards of today’s American system, it is graded

by a system testing the number of decibels that an individual may have lost either at birth or later

in life. According to the Mayo Clinic Organization (2023), there are several ways to identify

someone as being deaf. These test includes taking a physical exam where a professional health

care professional can test for things like an infection and blockage to the ear. Another way to test

someone's hearing is to have a screening test that involves having simple tests. Lastly, another

way to check is going to an audiologist, a specialist in providing a thorough examination to test

for a person's hearing.

The Changing View of Deaf People

Like so many other disabilities in the world today, the world and its societies have not

always had a favorable view of people with special needs. For deaf people, this perspective is

sadly no different. Many people who have been deaf in years past have been greatly mistreated

and largely looked down upon in society. Many prominent figures have fed into this narrative,

such as Aristotle. According to Anthony F. Rotatori, Festus E. Obiakor, and Jeffrey P. Bakken
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(2011), “Indeed in 355 BC Aristotle was reported to have claimed that those who were born deaf

would and hearing become stupid and incapable of reason. According to him, people with

hearing impairments could not be educated because, without the ability to hear, people could not

learn” (pg. 181-182). Such interpretations and experiences of deaf people from hundreds of years

ago clearly left the impression that deaf people and even people with hard of hearing were

determinants to society and consequently were viewed as such. Due to similar views, many deaf

or hard-hearing people were purposefully not taught and viewed as less than in society.

Just a few hundred years later, a slightly different perspective was made about those who

were deaf. Anthony F. Rotatori, Festus E. Obiakor, and Jeffrey P. Bakken (2011) cite that “St.

Augustine (354– 430 AD) in ‘‘Guilt Trip’’ claimed that the sins of parents were visited on their

children with hearing impairments. Augustine believed that faith came about by hearing the word

of God and that deafness was a hindrance to faith” (pg. 182). However, it is also noted that St.

Augustine believed they could be educated, which is entirely different from Aristotle's view.

These views would continue to change and mostly improve over hundreds of years to where we

are today.

Even hundreds of years later, the views on deaf people were forever changing, but still

have a ways to go to get to where we are today. One of the most prominent members of the deaf

community and even an essential inventor in history, Alexander Graham Bell, had an interesting

view of deaf people. Alexander Graham Bell, while a hearing man, took an extreme interest in

the deaf community and was a teacher who specifically focused on teaching deaf students.
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However, according to the New York Times (Andrew Solomon, 2021), they found that

Alexander Graham Bell was an educator who pushed for total oralism, which is the teaching of

speech to deaf students, that subsequently diminishes the need for something like sign language.

While oralism is not inherently an issue, the push for the total use of oral language and ultimately

getting rid of sign language, for many of those in the deaf community, is something that kills

their culture and language. In addition to this, Alexander Graham Bell also believed that it was

the responsibility of everyone to help get rid of the deaf gene. Alexander Graham Bell believed

that this could be achieved by people who are born deaf or have hearing complications should

not marry someone who is also deaf or has hearing complications from birth. This way, in the

eyes of Alexander Graham Bell, the deaf gene would essentially die off and no longer exist.

Laws That Protect Deaf Students

Many years have passed since Aristotle and St. Augustine’s views on deaf people, and

many new outlooks and even laws have been passed in the United States that have greatly

improved the views and opportunities that deaf people have. Deaf people within our society

today now have a greater chance of being better educated and even have more significant

opportunities to hold positions in government. Such laws, such as Public Law 87-276, which was

passed on September 22, 1961, specifically stated, “To make available to children who are

handicapped by deafness the specially trained teachers of the deaf needed to develop their

abilities and to make available to individuals suffering speech and hearing impairments the

specially trained speech pathologists and audiologists needed to help them overcome their

handicaps.” This law was a crucial step towards ensuring that all deaf students could be educated

by law.
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An additional law that immensely changed the dynamics for deaf students in the

classroom, which also changed so many lives of students who have other special needs, was the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The purpose of this law is to help ensure

that students in the public education field are given the proper tools to help provide early

intervention as early as two years old. The purpose of this law is to lay the foundation for

students to be able to obtain the optimal accommodations to achieve a higher level of academic

success. According to the Department of Education (2023), this law was authorized into

Congress in (2023) on November 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law the Education

for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142). However, this act was reauthorized

again in 2004 under the No Child Left Behind Act and was recently reworked in 2015 for the

Every Child Succeeds Act (Department of Education, 2023).

A Third law that greatly implicates all of this is the American Disabilities Act (ADA),

signed into law in 1990. According to the American Bar Association (Karl W. Topor, 2019),

Congress stated, “Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes

the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society. Improving educational results

for children with disabilities is essential to our national policy of ensuring equality of

opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals

with disabilities.” ADA is arguably the most important law to be signed into act for the United

States for people with any sort of disability. The ADA helps ensure that students will effectively

be given tools that are covered by the state to effectively allow students to be given similar

chances as other students without discrimination.

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Interestingly, despite all of these laws and policies that have been put into place, there are

still struggles that deaf students endure, and there are still cases of deaf students not properly

being given needed resources to help their academic success. A recent court case made it all the

way to the Supreme Court that was decided. According to Education Week (Mark Walsh, 2023),

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that a deaf student may pursue his

lawsuit for money damages against a Michigan school district that allegedly failed for years to

provide him with adequate sign language assistance.” As seen by this court case, it is apparent

that there is still a need to ensure that students are being protected and that they are aware of

their constitutional rights. All students, under the eyes of the United States government, are equal

and deserve an equitable chance at having academic success.

Interestingly, the same article continues by saying, “The court held in Luna Perez v.

Sturgis Public Schools that a procedural requirement under the main federal special education

law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, does not bar the student’s claim under the

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.” This shows the prevalence of the ADA and the

importance it has had in the field of education. Additionally, it shows that educators should be

aware of these laws and how they can protect their students and advocate for them to get the care

they need to succeed.

Incorporating Deaf Students into the Classroom

To understand how to incorporate deaf students into the classroom, it is essential to

identify their needs and what they can still do with their lives. A video by PBS KVIE (2022)

highlights a deaf teacher who teaches a deaf class. The teacher's name is Katherine Reyes, and
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she lost her hearing at the age of four due to a disease. At first, she was provided with cochlear

implants, but she continued to struggle academically. Katherine Reyes constantly fell behind in

her classes because she was supposed to use her listening skills and ability and did not have

access to an interpreter. However, by her ninth-grade year, she finally got a sign language

interpreter, and they acted as an interpreter and as a tutor to teacher Katherine signs language

until she became proficient in it.

Today, Katherine Reyes is a UC Berkley graduate and now a leader in the Deaf and Hard

of Hearing program at Solano County Office of Education. In addition to this, Katherine Reyes is

also a 2020 recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award. As an educator, Katherine constantly

pushes her students to achieve a higher level of academic success and believes in her students to

reach the college level even if they are deaf. Katherine Reyes believes that “if you have access to

language, then that means you are going to acquire the education.” This is just one example of

what it means to meet a student where they are and provide them with the proper tools to help

students better their chances of academic success.

Case Study

A potential story of a student who might come into a general education classroom can

look some like; Danny, who is a 15 year-old boy who went deaf at a very young age due to

multiple ear infections. Danny does have hearing aids but sometimes he perfers to take them off

because the sounds hurt his head or he feels he cannot hear what is being said anyways. Danny

has received early intervention and has taken a speech class throughout his time in school.

Despite these early interventions, Danny is still behind in his speech and language skills are
Teacher-Research: Deaf Students in the Classroom 10

delayed. Danny is being supported by audiologist who ensures that Danny’s hearing aids work

and he can remain in a general education classroom.

With this case study in mind, there are a few things that can greatly assist Danny and

other deaf students. One of the primary ways to best support a deaf student is to provide deaf

students with a sign language interpreter as an accommodation in the classroom. Interviewing a

student who was born deaf and a personal friend, Daniel Correa, or Danny, shared some of his

experience during his time in school. Danny explained that he had become deaf due to an

infection while he was still just an infant. Danny is not totally deaf, but it is moderate. Because

of this, Danny does have hearing aids to help assist him in communicating and hearing those

around him.

However, Danny mentions that he “struggle(s)” to hear and was taught sign language

early on. Though Danny knew sign language, he never preferred to use it as his primary mode of

communication as he wanted to interact with his friends on the playground. Danny went on to

say, “When I got to school, I was still trying to learn how to talk properly… I had a speech

therapist and a sign language interpreter.” In fact, from personal experience, I had known Danny

had a sign language interpreter in elementary school, a lady by the name of Ms. Fry. Ms. Fry was

fantastic and extremely kind. She would usually follow Danny around school and would often sit

with us at lunch. Danny explained that she would assist him in the classroom by walking him

through his speech or even communicating through sign language if the words were sometimes

difficult. Though sometimes it was apparent Danny was annoyed by Ms. Fry following him

around. However, as kids in elementary school, I don’t think any of us fully understood why he

had someone following him around. Danny explained, “I didn’t like that I had to have someone
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following me around to help me communicate. It made me feel different from everyone else.”

Despite this, Danny explained that he greatly benefitted from having speech classes and a sign

language interpreter. He has become proficient in his oral speaking and still uses it as his primary

mode of communication. Danny currently works full-time and also has an Instagram page for his

car that he personally works on and improves.

An additional way to provide deaf students accommodations in the classroom is through

the use of technology in the classroom. Technology has quickly become one of the best

supported and universal ways to communicate with so many different students, and their

disabilities and deafness are another one of them. According to an academic journal, they

conducted a ten-year study that tested what type of technology was best for deaf students (pg

197. Vaso Constantinou, Andri Ioannou, Iosif Klironomos, Margherita Antona, and Constantine

Stephanidis, 2020). They defined these technologies as Information Communication Technology

(ICT). These types of technology include computers, laptops, desktops, data projectors, software

programs, printer scanners, and interactive teaching boxes. The study concluded that no matter

the type of ICT, deaf students seemed to excel through this form of education. With this

information, any form of ICT would greatly benefit deaf students as they can engage as visual

and kinesthetic learners in the classroom.

Using ICT in the classroom can look like having all lectures and presentations on the

screen that carefully articulates all of the critical information from the lesson to the students. This

can also look like students using computers in the classroom to perform research and

development for them to form their own questions, understandings, and arguments. This can

significantly help deaf students learn how to search and analyze data on the go. For an additional
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challenge, the teacher can give students a strict and short time frame to come up with an answer

or argument to push student's critical thinking further. Additionally, on the computers, students

can be tasked with typing games to help them become proficient in their typing abilities and

enhance their quick thinking skills. Lastly, this can help students visually see their assignments

and projects and gain a clear description of what the final project should look like and the basis

of how much freedom they have within an assignment to complete.

Lastly, one of the most important ways to help deaf students in your class is to assign

their seating carefully. Oftentimes, a majority of deaf people will develop the skill of proficiently

reading people’s lips to help them follow along in conversation. However, this can be hindered if

further distractions in the class cause students to look away from whoever is speaking. In

addition, possibly items or people can step in between someone who is speaking and a deaf

student, which causes them to break from the conversation and no longer track what a person or

even the teacher is saying. So, teachers should strategically place deaf students in the front of the

class to minimize all of these distractions and barriers. Furthermore, teachers should refrain from

walking around the entire classroom while speaking and always stand in front to ensure that their

deaf students can hear or follow along with the educator for instructions.

All in all, deaf students have had an incredibly long history to get to where they are at

today. After centuries of mistreatment and being outcast of society, on the roughly last hundred

years have seen incredible growth and commitment towards teaching deaf students. We are

fortunate enough to live in a nation at this day and age that while does occasionally gets things

wrongs or even goes back on a previous decision, it advocates for deaf students and many people

with disabilities. There are so many ways deaf students can easily be incorporated into the
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classroom and provide a new way of teaching that can be applicable for all students. The biggest

thing we can do as educators though is advocate for our students. We should push for things like

sign language interpreters, inclusive technology in the classroom, and creating a thoughtful

seating chart.
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Resources

About idea. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (2022, November 7).

https://sites.ed.gov/idea/about-idea/

How are the terms deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, and hearing impaired typically

used?. How are the terms deaf, deafened, hard of hearing, and hearing impaired typically used? |

DO-IT. (2022, May 24). https://www.washington.edu/doit/how-are-terms-deaf-deafened-hard-

hearing-and-hearing-impaired-typically-used

History of Special Education, edited by Anthony F. Rotatori, et al., Emerald Publishing

Limited, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vusc-ebooks/detail.action?docID=655557

Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. (2023, March 30). Hearing loss.

Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hearing-loss/diagnosis-treatment/

drc-20373077#:~:text=Simple%20tests%20with%20tuning%20forks,does%20these%20more

%2Dthorough%20tests.

Solomon, A. (2021, April 6). Devoted to the deaf, did Alexander Graham Bell do more

harm than good?. The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/books/review/the-invention-of-miracles-katie-booth.html

75 stat.] public law 87-276-sept. 22,57 1965 1 - house. Individuals With Disabilities

Education Act. (2023, January 11). https://uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/87/276.pdf

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YouTube. (2022). Inside California Education: A Return to School – Day in the Life:

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Teacher. YouTube. Retrieved October 22, 2023, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYOKlRNoC-E.