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Background noise vs listening accessories

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Hi, Boris,

I’m a recently retired middle school teacher. In my last year of teaching, my hearing loss became much worse. I requested help from my employer and they recommended the Roger On. They wanted me to have the students pass it around. I researched a lot of options; I think that looping the room would have been the best one, but the district wouldn’t pay for it.

The Roger On was insufficient for my needs. However, since you are in a college level teaching situation, perhaps it would work for you. Kids in middle school interact with one another a lot more, and I needed to hear them all.

Personally, though, I don’t think that even the Roger On is much help. I think that there needs to be improvement in the technology and overall support for people with hearing loss to do their jobs, in general. And, as you may have noticed, I chose to retire rather than to struggle any longer in a bad situation.

(I got Phonak aids when I got the Roger).

In reply to @birdcountry99

Hello @birdcountry99, it is very sad you may have to retire, due to lack of support from your school or school board! There are many different Roger systems out there, that would greatly enhance a classroom experience, I am thinking along the lines of the Roger Touch Screen, where singular or multiple remote mikes could be used, controlled by you, via the Roger Touch Screen…The likes of, Roger Pass Around the Mic, it is fairly versatile, or Roger Inspiro’s (Older Tech) I picked up 3 of these 2nd hand, and working perfectly for £40 each, in the UK they are still on sale new for approximately £1350 each, the Roger Pass Around cost me £10, from eBay, they normally cost around £400 new… Touch Screen was acquired also from eBay at £350, again in the UK they would cost you new at around £900, you would also need 2 x Roger X (type 2) educational receivers! I think it’s a sad indictment of the apathy towards hearing impaired workers, and generally most governmental departments the world over, talk the talk, but they do not, walk the walk! If it’s going to cost them money, you are on your own! I am sure you are very valued by your young middle school kids, and fellow teacher’s alike, in my book, there is no substitute for experience… Especially in teaching! I am not suggesting you buy your own Roger equipment, but it is an option you could possibly pursue if you have the wherewithal, and eBay is your friend if finances are limited? Perhaps the school has a “parent association”, and if they were aware you might be retiring, just because, you need “fit for purpose” ’s, they might be willing to do some fundraising, you will never know, unless folks are aware of your predicament! Anyway, good luck, and hopefully you will not be forced to retire, where there is a will, there is usually a way… Cheers Kev :wink:

Hi, Kev,

Thanks so much for your kind suggestions! I have already retired as of June, but I agree that it was sad to leave the kids!

I was about to retire because I was 65 last year, so it made sense.

In appreciation,

Katy

Apologies @birdcountry99, tis the dyslexic in me, I missed that bit that you had already retired, that’s unfortunate for the kids! But enjoy your retirement, you have earned it! I retired myself last Monday at 66, in many ways it is a blessing… You take care Katy, cheers Kev :wink:

Thanks for the detailed post and your .
Looking at your audiogram and word understanding I suspect you have not been fit well with previous or current aids.
Have you had testing and updates with your current aids?

Well, it should work well for the groups, and for one on one.
It’s designed for smaller groups so it wouldn’t be my choice for church or movie theaters.
I hope this helps!

I use the media cable on the roger on with the fm receivers at my church to hear better when someone is speaking. For music, I use a music program through the mics. So I’m swapping back and forth.

WH

I have quite a few Roger ’s @BorisBleu… Mainly because of my profound/severe hearing loss, but also I love gadgets, and anything technical… Now that I have just retired, I probably don’t need all these Roger devices, but it’s nice to give a definitive answer (If I can) when someone on the forum asks about a particular Roger ALD… I am by no means an expert, just someone with a very keen interest in all things Roger :upside_down_face: “Good Luck” in your endeavours for a better hearing experience Boris, it’s usually down to trial & error, what may be an excellent listening set up for you, might sound terrible to me, but such is the fickle nature of hearing loss, it has to be tailored to each individual, even if 2 folks have similar hearing losses… Cheers Kev :wink:

@BorisBleu
As I retired in 2013 I cannot specifically talk about the use of Phonak Roger accesories available nowadays. But I have been in the same situation as you. Talking to classes of 15 to 60 persons without microphones and bigger audience where there were microphones in the public.
What helped me was asking the people who dared talking when I was asking to repeat what their important talking was about so me and everyone else could be informed also. No one daired talking after two times having this question in public again. I appreciated the silence in the public as there own intention to come to me was to hear me talking! No one was pushing them. But maybe I was lucky to just having to talk to academical public…

I wished for the available options there are now and I though/ dreamed a lot about it….

My latest experiences as my hearing slowly gets worse are for me an eye opener. I visited the and the hospital audiology dept.
Formerly I only had the with and without masking, the bone conduction and the test done and even some speech recognition testing. But now this was expanded with word recognition in low and high volume wordsets and with and without background noise for each ear separately. So what I realized now was that hearing is not just a tone audiogram correction. Because correction of tones did work out pretty well but correction of word recognition in small and bigger groups in silent and noisy backgrounds another one. Thereby audience talking in different languages and accents.

Furthermore I have programming devices for my old different Resounds and several Phonaks and professional frequency hearing device as a hobby. I also learned a lot of the knowledge of many of the members in this forum and reading books and YouTube info as well.

So what I finally found out and what amazes me is short said that I missed the conclusion of hearing is not just tone an pitch correction. Maybe it was my fault of only thinking of achieving great sound of music as that’s my hobby…

Is it not possible for you as focused on speech hearing to have done some extensive tuning in word and speech recognition with several ’s and combinations with accesories? I no it sounds weird but now I was lucky getting this I know these methods are there and exist. Probably not at every corner….

Wish you all the best for your specific hearing needs.
Emile

Seems to be a good thought over idea. Give it a try and be happy with it. As you will never know which parameters have to and can be further tuned there will always be uncertainty.

As stated in many responses over here your choice in any case is one of the best at the moment.

My Widex experiences where possibly good for music but not as good as Phonak for speech understanding next to the availability of the additional hearing listening devises offered. The Starkey did a good job also but I did not have the chance to try them with the Starkey table mic.

Wish you succes and good luck and hope you come back with the results here to get others informed also.
Emile

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