As part of the first year of your program to become a special education teacher for the hearing impaired, your course work in the teacher preparation program, you have to take courses in phonetics and learn how normal language develops. You will have to become proficient in sign language and learn how to teach it to both students and parents, if necessary. Some of the other courses you need to take include audiology, various communication skills for deaf children and the anatomy and physiology of speech. In addition, you will need to complete a practicum in which you spend time under the guidance of an audiologist or other professional dealing with deafness.
Your professional studies to help you become a special education for the hearing impaired include some courses that all teachers have to take, such as Introduction to Teaching, Child Development, School and Society and Instructional Technology. You will follow a different program with respect to the methodology courses you take in that they will all deal with how to teach students with hearing problems. These include such courses as methods of teaching academic subjects to deaf students and how to assess deaf students. You will have to complete an additional practicum or student teaching component in your second year of studies, during which you teach in a classroom with a teacher certified to teach in this field.
A special education teacher for the hearing impaired is often referred to as an itinerant teacher. Upon successful completion of the appropriate teaching certification exams for this area, you can be hired by a school district. For the states that accept the Praxis exams, the test you must take is called Education for the Deaf and Hard or Hearing and there are two categories, You can choose either Birth to Grade 3 or Pre-school to Grade 12. Depending on the state, you may also have to take additional exams in early childhood education or in special education in general. Since the number of students with hearing problems varies, you may have a part – time position in this field and work as the other part of the time teaching special education in a school. In a large district, the itinerant teacher usually works out of the main office and travels from school to school assessing and dealing with students., Your responsibility in this position is one of providing support to the teachers and the parents as well as the students.
With training as a special education teacher for the hearing impaired, you can get a job working in an institution where there are only deaf children or in a hospital. There are various avenues through which you can search for jobs in this field, such as newspapers, state education board websites and the websites of the various school districts.
