Communication Tips for the New School Year

As the upcoming school year approaches, it is important to prepare students for a successful return to in-person classes or online learning. Consider implementing these back to school communication tips and strategies to facilitate a smoother transition and enhance the overall academic experience.

Back to School Communication Tips

Captions

Utilize captioning to promote video viewing, webinar participation, and recorded speech comprehension. Real-time speech transcription is available through phone apps like live transcription and other web-based text-to-speech services.

Lipreading

Maximizing lipreading by ensuring unobstructed sight lines between the instructor and student during virtual lessons is essential to improve classroom communication. The speaker must be visible on camera so that participants can observe their lip movements, as hearing and lipreading complement each other in normal communication.

Background Noise

Addressing distracting background noise that impedes learning is vital for success. Strategies such as using noise-canceling headphones and hearing aids, keeping windows and doors closed, incorporating sound-proofing panels, and optimizing classroom acoustics can significantly enhance the learning environment.

Listening Aids

Consider utilizing assistive listening devices. People with hearing aids or cochlear implants can wirelessly connect to devices such as FM systems for direct audio transmission to their ears; many venues are equipped with audio looping systems compatible with T-coil settings on specific hearing aids.

Bluetooth

You can stream audio directly to your Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids from smartphones, computers, and stereos. This lets you personalize the sound to meet your precise listening and learning needs.

Regular Check-Ups

Regular hearing check-ups for the students in your household, similar to the routine check-ups for their eyes and teeth, will help you stay ahead of hearing needs. It is also important to be aware of the signs of potential hearing loss:

• Problems following lectures or instructions from educators
• Difficulty understanding people wearing face masks
• Routine requests to repeat statements
• Reoccuring earaches
• Turning up media volume
• Worsening grades or reports that your child doesn’t participate in class

We encourage everyone to schedule a hearing check-up as soon as possible. Routine hearing tests can proactively identify potential issues and facilitate a successful start to the back-to-school season for you and your loved ones. Enhanced hearing capability can significantly contribute to the academic performance of students of all ages. We recommend not delaying and scheduling back-to-school hearing evaluations for the entire family today.