Ida Fellows Carrie Spangler and Gail Whitelaw have developed an overnight camp for teenagers with hearing loss. The camp provides high school students with social and emotional support as they transition to college and begin their lives as adults.
Teenagers with hearing loss experience unique challenges as they move into a new life stage where they have more responsibilities and independence.
“Students with hearing loss often receive a lot of attention and support during the early years, but there seems to be a breakdown in support when they reach middle school and high school,” states Carrie Spangler, AuD, Educational Audiology Clinician at the University of Akron. “Socially and emotionally, teenagers may need to connect and speak frankly with other teens with hearing loss. Parents, on the other hand, get to this new chapter in their child’s life where their children are becoming more independent. Many parents, however, do not know how or what they need to do in order to support their children.”
The overnight camp provides a chance for teens to meet other teenagers that have hearing loss and share experiences. Many of the high school students who participate in the camp attend neighborhood schools in small communities across the state of Ohio. The camp is often the first time that they have had the opportunity to interact with other peers with hearing loss.
Carrie Spangler understands some of the challenges associated with growing up with a hearing loss. Spangler has profound, bilateral hearing loss. She has worn hearing aids since she was four years old.
“I never knew anyone else with hearing loss until high school or college. Nobody else really understood some of the challenges that I was going through, and I didn’t know enough about my own hearing loss to even talk about or describe these challenges,” states Carrie Spangler.
“When you grow up with hearing loss, you don’t know what you are missing. I didn’t know that other people with normal hearing could perform in a different way. Since I did not have a good understanding of my communication challenges, I was not a good advocate for my own needs. When I finally met someone who had a hearing loss, she could tell me about the challenges she faced and how she overcame them. This helped significantly.”
The overnight camp also aims to teach teenagers how they can best advocate for their needs at college, future work places, and beyond.
Over the course of the two-day camp, camp counselors serve as mentors and role models for the teenage participants. The camp counselors are young adults with a hearing loss who have recently graduated from college or are working. The camp includes educational programs during the day and fun activities during the evening, such as sports, games, and team building exercises. The fun atmosphere creates a space where the participants and counselors can bond and engage in many fruitful, informal conversations.
“Having the activities in the evening was a great way for the teenagers to get to know to each other,” states Carrie Spangle. “When we returned to the dormitory in the evening, all the students wanted to speak with each other about different life situations. We just saw around for hours in a common area and chatted about challenges and hearing loss.”
The teenagers also get an opportunity to perform a number of role-plays and skits drawing from situations from the lives of the counselors and participants.
“One of the most popular topics from last year’s camp was dating and relationships,” states Carrie Spangler. “They want to be just like everyone else. How do you tell this other person that you are interested in that you have a hearing loss in a way that does not turn them away? This is a big concern for many young people.”
Other role-play topics include going to the doctor’s office, job interviews, and college sports. The camp counselors would act out the situation, such as what not to do in the job interview. After each role-play skit, the group explore what could have gone better during the situation and offer different possible solutions or courses of action.
“One student had difficulty with a particular sports coach at their high school. The coach did not understand why she did not respond to certain instructions and her teammates did not treat her very well. This led to a dynamic group discussion about how to deal with coaches, teachers, and others who do not know how to relate to someone with hearing loss. It was an eye opening experience,” states Carrie Spangler.
Fifteen high school students from across Ohio attended the first overnight camp at Ohio State University last summer. Spangler and Whitelaw will hold another overnight camp this June.
Carrie Spangler is currently an Educational Audiology Clinician at the University of Akron School of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. She received her Master’s degree in audiology from the University of Akron and her AuD from Arizona School of Health Sciences. She is very active in her community, having co-founded Hearing Impaired Teens Interacting Together, an advocacy and social support group in Stark County, Ohio, United States. She has also collaborated with fellow Stark County audiologists to develop the SPEAK Program (Stark Project for Educating Audition in Kids). SPEAK is an auditory, oral preschool program to develop spoken language in young hearing-impaired children.
Gail M. Whitelaw is an audiologist and Director of the Speech-Lanugage-Hearing Clinic at the Ohio State University. She is a past-President of both the American Academy of Audiology and the Ohio Academy of Audiology and the Chair of the American Board of Audiology.<xml></xml>