Submitted by: Janelle Parker, NC Teacher
For the third time that week, the student raised a hand just before recess.
“My stomach hurts. Can I go to the nurse?”
A few minutes later, the child was sitting beside the nurse’s desk, answering questions about breakfast and describing where it hurt.
No fever. No nausea. Nothing unusual.
The student remained in the office until recess ended.
After several similar visits, the nurse contacted the classroom teacher.
The teacher was not surprised to hear that the student might be avoiding recess.
“The student usually stays close to us when we go outside,” she explained. “We encourage them to join the other children. They walk away for a few minutes, but usually come right back.”
When Social Time Is Not Accessible
Recess is often treated as a natural opportunity for children to build friendships.
For a student who is Deaf or Hard of Hearing, both indoor and outdoor recess may be among the most difficult parts of the school day.
Outside, children call to one another while running, turn away while speaking, and move quickly between conversations and games. Inside, several conversations, games, and activities may happen in one room at the same time.
Some children’s voices may also be more difficult for a student to understand than the projected voices of adults. Depending on the student’s hearing levels, access to higher-frequency speech sounds may be limited. Adults are also more likely to face the student, repeat what was missed, wait for a response, or explain something another way.
Talking with adults may simply require less work.
The challenge does not end when students outgrow recess.
In middle and high school, friendships are often built in crowded hallways, busy cafeterias, before class, and during short breaks. A student may miss the beginning of a conversation, lose track when speakers change, or realize too late that the group has moved to a new topic.
Students may also miss plans, jokes, changing game rules, and information about current interests that hearing peers gather through overheard conversations. Missing these small pieces can make it harder to enter a conversation or understand why everyone else is laughing.
Time away from classmates can add another barrier. Specialized instruction and related services may be necessary, but they can reduce opportunities to build shared experiences with peers.
The student visiting the nurse may not dislike recess or prefer adult friendships. The nurse’s office may offer something the playground does not: a quiet setting and a patient communication partner.
Before assuming that a D/HH student is avoiding peers, the school team may need to ask:
What makes conversation with adults easier than conversation with other students?
Create Better Places to Connect
Schools cannot create friendships, but they can create conditions where friendships have a better chance to grow.
For younger students, that might include a quieter recess activity with crafts, puzzles, building materials, or visual games. These activities allow children to interact around a shared task without depending on fast spoken conversation.
For middle school students, it might mean identifying a quieter area for lunch or small-group activities. The space should remain a social option rather than becoming another place where the student is separated from peers.
For high school students, accessible clubs and extracurricular activities can provide opportunities to connect through shared interests. Communication support should follow the student’s interests whenever possible instead of limiting the student to activities that are easiest to staff.
The physical environment matters too.
Cafeterias, common areas, and multipurpose rooms often contain hard surfaces that allow sound to bounce around the room. Acoustic wall panels, ceiling tiles, and other sound-absorbing materials can reduce reverberation.
Teachers can identify where communication becomes difficult, but some solutions require support beyond the classroom. When noise repeatedly limits participation, the school team may need to bring the concern to administrators, facilities staff, or district leaders who can approve acoustic improvements.
Offering quieter spaces does not mean every D/HH student wants quiet social time. Some students enjoy busy cafeterias, games, sporting events, and large groups. Others may need an occasional break from listening, interpreting, captioning, or monitoring several speakers.
The goal is to determine whether the student is choosing a needed break or leaving because participation is inaccessible.
Teach Students to Communicate Directly
Self-advocacy is often taught as a list of things a D/HH student can ask other people to do.
“Please repeat that.”
“Face me when you talk.”
“One person at a time.”
Those skills matter, but students can also learn how to set up a conversation for better access.
A younger child can learn to move where everyone’s faces are visible, bring a small group to a quieter location, or show a picture when the right word is difficult to find.
A middle school student can learn to choose a better seat at lunch, identify the current speaker, or explain why a different location would make conversation easier.
A high school student can learn to select and manage captioning, interpreting, or speech-to-text tools across classes, clubs, work, and social activities.
Some group transcription tools allow several people to join the same conversation from separate phones or tablets. As participants speak near their devices, the conversation appears as text with each speaker identified. Students and peers should have opportunities to practice these tools before they are needed.
Communication does not always depend on perfect spoken language. Children naturally use gestures, drawings, objects, photos, and phrases such as, “Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Reading and vocabulary development also support social access. Captions, visual media, and direct vocabulary instruction can help students access the shows, games, jokes, activities, and current topics their peers discuss.
Hearing peers may need guidance too. They can learn to get the student’s attention, face the person while talking, repeat or rephrase, and move to a quieter location when possible.
Interpreters, cued speech transliterators, aides, and other professionals can model these strategies and help students get started. They can then step back when peers are communicating successfully while remaining available when support is needed.
The goal is direct peer-to-peer communication rather than making an adult the permanent center of every interaction.
Support Social Choice
Placing two D/HH students together does not guarantee that they will become friends.
They may understand some of the same experiences while having completely different personalities and interests. One may love sports while the other prefers academics, gaming, music, or art.
Use care when grouping students because they share hearing loss, an interpreter, a classroom, or another service. Proximity is not the same as friendship.
Shared services can also affect students’ choices. When two students share one interpreter, they may be expected to attend the same club or activity even when their interests are different.
When students want to attend separate activities, school teams can explore borrowing an interpreter, contracting for short periods, or planning additional coverage for special events. A student-approved backup communication plan may also help during occasional gaps in coverage.
Access should help students participate without requiring them to build identical schedules or social lives.
The same care is needed when assigning a “helper friend.”
A peer-support pairing can provide reassurance, explain a routine, or help a student become comfortable in a new setting. School teams should still consider:
- Is the D/HH student’s voice heard?
- Can the student participate without depending completely on one peer?
- Does the pairing build confidence and independence?
- Do both students want and benefit from the arrangement?
Rotating partners and checking in privately with both students can prevent one child from becoming another student’s permanent voice or decision-maker.
Opportunities to meet other D/HH students and age-relevant role models can also reduce isolation. These connections may happen through regional events, camps, virtual groups, school partnerships, or community organizations.
Books and media featuring D/HH characters can show students using hearing technology, sign language, cued speech, captions, and other supports while having ordinary friendships and experiences.
Shared hearing experiences may create an important connection, but students should still decide which relationships become friendships.
Look at the Whole School Day
Teachers often notice social patterns first.
They may see a student staying close to adults during recess, leaving the cafeteria early, lingering in a classroom between periods, or repeatedly visiting the nurse during social times.
One moment may mean very little by itself. A pattern across the school day deserves a closer look.
A Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and school counselor can work with teachers, families, related service providers, and the student when age appropriate to consider whether communication access is affecting social participation.
Older students may be able to explain which environments and supports work best. Younger children may need adults to observe patterns, offer choices, and notice where interaction happens most naturally.
In North Carolina, the Communication Plan Worksheet provides a place to bring communication needs to the IEP team. It is a required part of the IEP for children with hearing loss in the state. Schools outside North Carolina can use their own IEP processes and D/HH teams to begin the same discussion.
The team does not need to choose the student’s friends.
The team can make sure communication access is not choosing for them.
Make Room for Friendship
Friendships grow through shared interests, ordinary conversations, repeated experiences, and time together.
A student who spends social time with adults may be showing the school where communication feels easiest.
A student who avoids recess, lunch, clubs, or busy hallways may be showing the school where communication requires more effort.
Another student may simply be showing the school that they need time to rest.
Sometimes the answer is a quieter table, a visual activity, a better communication strategy, or access to a club that matches the student’s interests.
Small changes can create more opportunities for students to communicate directly, pursue their interests, and build relationships based on genuine connection.
The next time a D/HH student is encouraged to “go play,” consider one more question:
Have we made it possible for the student to join?
How Equalize Sensory Services Can Help
Equalize Sensory Services can help school teams evaluate communication access across classrooms, social settings, and extracurricular activities. Our Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing can work with educators, families, and related service providers to identify barriers and create practical strategies that support participation and independence.
Equalizing access. Empowering success.