Auditory Access to the Curriculum:
One Family’s Experience

Joe Farrell

Most of us don’t give acoustics much thought in the course of our daily lives. Sure, we appreciate the fine listening qualities of a first rate music hall or we cringe in the din of a noisy gym, but generally we get by.

My youngest daughter, Emily, is a bright, gregarious, energetic fourth grader who also happens to have a moderate-severe binaural hearing loss. She adapted very well to hearing aids at an early age, but they do not correct to normal hearing, and noisy rooms always present more difficulty. When she entered kindergarten in a regular education setting, acoustics became a much bigger deal to me.

It’s stating the obvious to say that children are not little adults. In the case of their hearing and listening skills, children’s auditory neurological network is not fully developed and they don’t have the life experiences and context to fill in the missing information when they miss parts of conversations. In the school environment, young learners have short attention spans and are easily distracted. The problems are compounded for children with any type of auditory processing impairment.

Emily started kindergarten with a personal FM system. Her teacher wore a small wireless microphone that transmitted to receiving “boots” on her hearing aids. When it was working right, the FM system gave Emily a strong link to teacher instruction. The downside was that it reduced hearing aid amplification for the non-miked conversation of her classmates. She excelled in school but felt cut off from peers and stigmatized by the external aid. At the end of second grade, she pleaded with us to not use the FM and said she could hear just fine without it. We suspected that might not be the case since young children don’t always know what they miss, and we feared that Emily might fudge a little on facts to avoid using the personal FM system.

I think the “aha” moment for me that gave me some insight into what she might be hearing – or not hearing – was during her Individual Education Plan (IEP) team meeting when we gathered in the principal’s office to discuss her upcoming plan for third grade. I sat next to an air conditioning unit that was no noisier than typical units, but I missed many parts of the conversation, I couldn’t jump in a timely manner as one would in a normal conversation, and I was worn out at the end of one hour from listening so hard. I couldn’t imagine how Emily coped through long school days.

In third grade, she continued to excel even without the FM. The school had provided a carpet since first grade that matriculated with her from grade to grade. The carpet helped reduce reverberation as well as noise from moving chairs. She had an experienced teacher with a loud, clear speaking voice who also made sure that Emily had favorable seating positions for different classroom activities.

In fourth grade, Emily made the transition to the middle school. Our concern was that the instruction would become faster paced and more complex. She was also going to the oldest building in the district. I had had the opportunity to teach Sunday school in her class wing, and I had recalled how sounds tended to echo through the rooms. Her classroom has high ceilings with tall windows. There are acoustic tiles on the ceiling, but they had been painted over to cover stains, so their acoustic benefit was lost.

At this point I need to mention that we were always fortunate that the Cape Henlopen district—administrators, specialists, and teachers—were always very supportive by providing necessary classroom accommodations as well as experienced and effective teachers who were willing to support Emily’s special needs. This classroom was acoustically unsatisfactory, and we needed to ensure that there was sufficient acoustic treatment to reduce echo or reverberation and that the teacher’s voice could be heard above background noise.

Carpeting, which had to be installed, and existing window treatments helped with reverberation. The school also obtained sound absorbing wall panels in case they were needed. With support from Richard Gays, who coordinates statewide services for the deaf and hard of hearing, Cape placed an FM sound field system in the classroom. The sound field system is similar to a personal FM unit, except that amplification is to the room instead of the personal hearing aid. The teacher wears a wireless microphone that transmits to several speakers placed strategically around the classroom. While sound field systems cannot overcome bad room acoustics (rooms with a lot of reverberation and/or background noise), they do improve the signal-noise (S/N) ratio by amplifying the teacher’s voice throughout the room. Teachers who use the systems report reduced voice strain and an ability to get student attention without raising their voices. The added benefit is that all children in the classroom receive improved acoustic access to their teacher.

So far we have been very pleased with the result of the sound field system. It is an inexpensive and effective approach at improving the S/N ratio and acoustic access for students. Emily continues to excel in school and reports she has no problems in hearing her teacher or her peers. Down the road Emily will attend a new middle school that is currently under construction. While the new school will most likely have better acoustics than the older building, the standard for classroom acoustics has not been incorporated into Delaware building codes for new school construction, so I say this with some uncertainty.

The issue of classroom acoustics has not received the attention it deserves, given the importance of hearing to young learners. We need acoustic standards for new school construction and renovation that provide guidance on good design and construction practices while also leaving flexibility to achieve goals of adequate speech intelligibility for all students and teachers in classroom and learning spaces. The standards have the potential to provide significant positive impact on the classroom learning environment at modest cost.