Ep. 113 - Serving Students Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing with Necessary SEL Supports

BIG PICTURE Social Emotional Learning Podcast

You know how sometimes you learn about something you didn’t have even a clue about the fact that you were completely unaware of what you didn’t know? That’s what happened to me in the following conversation with Sherri Fickensher who is an Education Support Specialist, serving deaf and hard of hearing students at Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech for more than 20 years.

Hearing is a sense most of us take for granted. In this conversation I learned about the multitude of ways that not hearing impacts, really impacts, social and emotional interactions.

Throughout this conversation you’ll notice Sherri’s whole-hearted dedication to continual learning of ever-evolving resources and methodologies for serving deaf and hard of hearing students (and their families) to address and manage inevitable challenges so they can live and enjoy to their fullest potential.

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Helpful links from this conversation:

Low Empathy in Deaf and Hard of Hearing (Pre)Adolescents Compared to Normal Hearing Controls. Hearing impairment poses many challenges to the developing child. Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children for instance frequently encounter language and communication problems. These difficulties in communication may result in reduced opportunities for incidental learning. Especially abstract concepts such as emotions are therefore more difficult to understand for children with hearing loss [1]. Regulating and understanding one’s own emotions is essential for the development of adequate empathic abilities. Consequently, DHH children are prone to develop lower empathic skills than normal hearing (NH) peers. Because empathy is of major importance in initiating and maintaining social relationships, this could have ongoing consequences in the development of DHH children.

Predicting social functioning in children with a cochlear implant and in normal-hearing children: The role of emotion regulation Cochlear implant children have less adequate emotion-regulation strategies and less social competence than normal hearing children. Since they received their implants relatively recently, they might eventually catch up with their hearing peers. Longitudinal studies should further explore the development of emotion regulation and social functioning in cochlear implant children.


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