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Living With Hearing Loss From
From ‘Bionic’ Kid to Giving-Back Dad
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A “hearing teacher” who grew up with a hearing loss helps deaf and hard of hearing students navigate school and life. By Mark J. Miller
TV’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” was a bit of a savior to me back when I was a kid in the ’70s. The show followed a former astronaut who, after an errant test flight, gets rebuilt with “bionics” that make him extra strong and extra fast. He, of course, becomes a secret agent, and viewers often got to see the electronics embedded in his skin.
Meanwhile, I was walking around with a massive Zenith hearing aid under my shirt and a wire popping out of my collar and up to my ear. It helped to be able to tell other kids I was like the Bionic Man. I’d pretend to be able to hear conversations two rooms over through my before-its-time wearable tech. The ruse only worked for so long, but at least we got a few laughs out of it.
I was born with a bilateral, mild-to-profound sensorineural loss due to BOR Syndrome, a rare syndrome that can affect your hearing and kidneys; my audiogram looks like a double-black-diamond ski slope. For some unknown reason, I only wore one hearing aid for most of my childhood, but eventually graduated to two behindthe-ear aids and then in-the-canal outfits once I graduated from college and had a little dough (stress on “little”).
One of my sisters is also hard of hearing, but we didn’t compare notes too often about our predicament. Other than her, I had never met anyone else who was hard of hearing until my senior year of high school when a girl noticed my hearing aid and told me she had one, too. I was completely stunned into silence, not knowing what to say. I still feel bad about it.
As an adult, I spent 25 years in the world of magazine and website publishing and absolutely loved it, but a strange thing happened. A good friend who is a teacher kept encouraging me to become a teacher, too, after seeing how much I enjoyed coaching the soccer team our young daughters played on together.
While I liked the idea, I also didn’t want to take on a classroom, where it would be hard to hear students in the back. Truth be told, I didn’t want to deal with actually managing the emotional roller coaster of 30 kids, either. Plus, I loved what I did. Every day as a writer was a new adventure with new stories to tell.
Then I got a phone call from my pal. “A woman came into my classroom today who is something called a hearing teacher. Have you heard of such a thing?”
Well, no, I hadn’t. And so we talked about what hearing teachers do, which is meeting with deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students and helping them with any social, emotional, academic, and straight-up technical issues related to their hearing.
As hearing teachers, we are advocates for our students, teaching instructors, administrators, and even parents how to work with each child’s hearing loss. Then we teach the students to advocate for themselves. The potential impact
Opposite page: Coaching his daughter’s soccer team led Mark Miller to recognize how much he enjoys teaching. He became a hearing teacher for students with hearing loss, an adult advocate he wishes he had as a kid growing up (far left).
One of my favorite moments when I meet a new student is when I take out my hearing aids and show them that we have something in common; oftentimes I’m the first fellow hard of hearing person they’ve ever met. I never had a hearing teacher, but I wish I’d had someone who could have helped guide me through the social pitfalls and taught me how to be a better self-advocate.
we can have when working one-to-one or in small groups attracted me. It sounded interesting, and also appealed as a way I could give back.
One of my favorite moments when I meet a new student is when I take out my hearing aids and show them that we have something in common; oftentimes I’m the first fellow hard of hearing person they’ve ever met. I never had a hearing teacher, but I wish I’d had someone who could have helped guide me through the social pitfalls and taught me how to be a better self-advocate. Instead, I just nodded and smiled before figuring out on my own that there was a better way to go through life.
I loved journalism, but I love being a hearing teacher, too. Like my past life, each day brings new characters, new adventures, and new stories. It is an honor to try and help these kids try to figure out where they fit in and how to be sure they can hear to the best of their abilities. Perhaps my work now is a way to make up for leaving my classmate with a hearing loss hanging all those years ago.
So now I get to hear the stresses of today’s young kids with hearing loss and relate them back to my own concerns. The world of hearing devices has obviously changed with digital, Bluetooth, and even accessories for hearing aids that make them look like tiny basketballs.
When I found myself in the hearing-teacher world, I realized I was reading a ton of hearing-related articles that were extremely helpful, whether it was to show students examples of the cool jobs done by hard of hearing adults, keep up on the tech and political changes happening in the DHH world, or discover all the different forms advocacy could take. I figured my colleagues could use this same info so I created a little in-house newsletter, which evolved into the Hear Ye website.
It’s pretty rudimentary, but the basic idea is to provide a central point for news about hearing issues so people can find it in one place. I try to update it a few times during the course of the week. Some weeks I’m more successful with that than others. While the audience is very specialized, it feels good to know that I’m helping someone out there find the information.
Being hard of hearing has certainly shaped who I am. One of the most important lessons I share with my students is discerning the difference between hearing and listening. In the end, we discover that just because we don’t have great hearing doesn’t mean we can’t be great listeners. Most people, hearing or not, aren’t good listeners, but I believe it’s crucial that we all work on this dying art (even if we can’t exactly make out what’s being said two rooms away).
Mark J. Miller is a teacher in the New York City school system. For more, see sites.google.com/view/hear-ye.
Share your story: Tell us your hearing loss journey at editor@hhf.org.
