I have a PhD in biology and a degree in education, and I became interested in working with deaf students while subbing at a school that integrated deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing students. Over this time, I've taken a few classes in ASL, have worked closely with deaf staff and students, and have learned a lot about Deaf culture. I've been following this subreddit for several years now, quietly learning. As with many marginalized communities, I am aware of my privilege and that some actions I might take with good intentions might end up causing harm. In this case, like taking a job best met by a Deaf person. Which brings me to my situation.

I saw a job listing for a teacher at a state school for the deaf and blind. This would be my home state, a very rural and poor area, and I feel the need to help make sure that they are getting access to the science education they need, especially for the students who want to pursue science careers. As a person with invisible disabilities, I am passionate about making science more accessible as a whole, and this is work that I believe is important.

But I also know that this may not be the role for me, as a hearing person. I certainly don't want to take an opportunity away from any Deaf (or blind) science teachers who would want the job, but I genuinely don't know how many would want it. We are looking at a very rural area without a lot of people who are either scientists or Deaf.

So I thought I would turn to this community for insights. What are your thoughts? Where should a hearing person draw the line when it comes to this sort of thing?

Hi everyone! As part of my ASL major, one of the intro courses goes over CSD and is split into 3 sections: SLP, Audiology, and Interpreting. The majority of the class has SLP focused students, and in their intro posts, a handful of them said something along the lines of “helping people with hearing loss”.

I understand that they may not be the most familiar or educated on the Deaf community, which is totally okay. They can learn. My issue with the course is how it’s set up. Much of the material in the audiology section is reused from at least 9.5 years ago. I totally get teachers using prior resources, but given the fact that tech has advanced so much, along with understanding of Deaf identities and Signed Languages, that’s seems quite a large discrepancy.

I was diagnosed with a disease that caused my deafness (though I became deaf a bit before it was diagnosed bc it’s a progressive disease) a year or so before one of the video lectures I watched was published, and it didn’t even mention the type of hearing aid that I first was given when the professor was going over different kinds of HA, either.
Of course, the SLP portion focused on fixing and forcing speech, and also seemed to prioritized using technology and personal devices to communicate rather than building language skills in an actual language. I understand it for children that may need help with apraxia and other speech disorders, but deafness is not one of them. Once again, hearing loss is heavily used and I can’t even remember how many times I’ve heard deaf/deafness. Probably can count them on one hand.

I’ll have to contact the professor that teaches the interpreting portion and see what their knowledge and awareness of this is. I’d like to bring it up to my professors and maybe someone higher up that would be able to get the course content up to date.
I know anecdotally and personally about how and why it’s offensive to say one thing, how signing is much better than language deprivation, etc. but does anyone have any articles or research papers they would recommend for me to cite in an email to them? I’ll also do my own research, ofc, but also looking for recs or advice from anyone that might have been in the same or similar situation before.

TLDR: college course using outdated resources/phrases/information to “educate” students and I want to help change it

Tysm! 🤟🏻🧏

To preface, I’m new to the deaf community and have a lot to learn, especially as a hearing person who didn’t grow up seeing the culture or the day to day differences.

I (19f) live with my girlfriend (19f) who has been hard of hearing her whole life. Her first language was ASL, so I’m learning it because she’s going to be fully deaf within the next year and a half or so and even though she can lip read me like she’s reading a book, I’d really like fore that to not be what our communication looks like when she can’t hear me at all.

SO HERES THE ISSUE

She got a job where she needs to wake up at 3:30 am to be able to make it there by 5am comfortably, and waking up has been an issue before and now it’s happened a couple times with this job. She’s been trying to go to sleep earlier so she wakes up, and it’s worked most of the time, but sometimes when she’s exhausted she doesn’t wake up. The way she wakes up now is by alarms on her phone and on her Apple Watch so the vibrations wake her up. I usually set timers or alarms too so that I can wake up to make sure she didn’t sleep in by accident. I work evenings though and usually aren’t going to sleep until 11-midnight, which makes it difficult to wake up to timers because of the deep sleep I’m usually in.

So the question is;

What is the solution to this?
We’ve tried a vibrating bracelet but that didn’t work very well. Honestly I’m pretty out of ideas. I really want to help but I feel like there’s nothing I can do :(

Ps the job market sucks and she really loves this job and it’s a step in the right direction for the career she wants to have so getting a different job is out of the question

Thank you for your time 🙏

I was a toddler when my mom noticed that when she called my name, I would not look at her or come to her. She threw some coins and saw that I wasn't hearing those sounds either. I got used to being yelled at or called loudly by my family. They never made fun of me, but from time to time we have black humor about it. At the time, in my home country, technology was not as advanced as it is now, and my parents had no idea about my deafness. I was born deaf in my right ear, and my left ear is hard of hearing.
I'm 45(f)now in the state of Texas , and in September 2026 I finally got my audiogram. My right ear is completely deaf (no response, deaf since birth). My left ear has a mild loss in the low pitches that slopes down to a severe loss in the high pitches (roughly 30 dB at 250 Hz, dropping to about 80-85 dB around 2000-3000 Hz). My speech reception threshold is 40 dB, and my word recognition is 84% in quiet and 80% in noise. My middle ear tests were normal (Type A tympanograms). The audiologist recommended hearing aids, possibly BiCROS.

I use Ai for help since English is my second language.