All teachers would agree that the ability to hear well in the classroom is essential. Even with hearing aids, understanding my pupils had slowly become more and more difficult. It’s amazing how physically exhausting it is, just trying to hear your pupils! Now imagine you’re teaching in a bilingual programme (TTO) where pupils are learning the English language, and must speak ONLY English in their lessons. Not only is it difficult to hear, it’s even more of a challenge to understand them.
The addition of accoustic panels on the walls didn’t help like I thought it would. When children in the back of the class spoke, it was as it the sound had simply been absorbed into the walls and never hit my ears in the front of the room. Then carpet was installed in my classroom. Oh, the joy of not hearing the scraping of chairs on the floor magnified in my ears! But I still couldn’t hear the kids in the back of the classroom, not to mention the soft-spoken kids anywhere in the room.
My coping mechanism was to simply walk close to the students to hear what they had to say, and of course my well-used line, ‘Could you repeat that please?’ which resulted in lots of eye rolling. Then along came the Covid-19 crisis: children wearing masks in the classroom and a plexi-glass barrier between us. Now I truly couldn’t hear anything!
Fortunately the school made contact with Adviesbureau PlanPlan. Andrea and Guido were very professional and extremely helpful. I now have an installation of 11 microphones hanging from the ceiling and a stop light to let students know when it is too noisy in the classroom. Because of Covid-19, I also have a table microphone for the ‘overleg tafel’ on the other side of the plexi-glass barrier. The system is wonderful! I can hear the softest-spoken student in the back row! I can hear when the students are whispering in Dutch to their classmates – a no-no in TTO.
I look forward to the day and am no longer exhausted at the end of it. (Well, maybe sometimes.. 😊)