Well, I just received two of my favorite e-mails from another professional in my district. Our students just did the hearing screening and we were notified of the results.
E-mail #1: “*Student’s Name* just failed the hearing test in his left ear. Please make sure that he is seated in the class so that his left ear is facing you.”
LOL. I imagined me tying a string to his stool and always turning his stool so his left ear faced me as an educational accommodation.
E-mail #2: “*Student’s Name* just failed the vision screening test in both ears. Please seat him at the front of the room.”
WHAT?!?!?! Josh imagined them blindfolding a child, then asking him to read the vision poster on the wall by listenting to it. Heh, this’ll keep me chuckling for days…
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Maybe I’m missing something but if you were to make accommodations for the first student wouldn’t you want the good ear towards you and not the bad one?
OK, I agree that the second email doesn’t make any sense, and I agree with Jeff’s confusion about which ear should be facing you, but I don’t see anything out of line with asking that a student be placed so that their good ear is facing the teacher. If his left ear is bad, place him on the left side of the classroom so that his good ear will be facing you most of the time.
I think I was more laughing because I don’t stand at the traditional “spot in front of the room” when I teach. I move around a lot. We do a lot of small group work and large group discussions and that kind of thing.
I imagined tying a rope to the student’s chair and always pulling it so it faces me or something. Or maybe giving him a robotic chair that automatically senses sound and turns the appropriate direction. The other kids would get jealous because they also wanted robotic sound-sensing chairs.