Teacher of the Deaf
What the work is
Teaches academic and living skills to deaf and hard of hearing students, and promotes students' social, emotional, intellectual and physical development. Supports students with equitable access to communication, learning and socialisation opportunities in a range of educational settings.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Uses teaching strategies based on knowledge of the implications of hearing loss on students' physical, social, emotional and cognitive development to improve student learning
- Develops teaching activities that incorporate reasonable adjustments based on individual language levels, spoken and signed language modes, communication systems, and multimedia technology such as captions
- Develops modifications to the curriculum and assessment needs to support the full participation of students who are deaf or hard of hearing, and those with additional disability
- Applies knowledge and understanding of the expanded core curriculum for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, which may include managing personal audiological devices, and working with educational Interpreters and note takers
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a support class inside a primary school, working with students who learn in different ways. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A student who has struggled to read for years reads a sentence aloud and looks up at you
- A strategy you built for one child gets picked up by the whole class
- A parent who has been worried for years sees their child join in at school
Hard days
- A day where every plan you made meets a child who needs something quite different
- Writing plans and reports that take hours away from the children
- A meeting where adults disagree about what is best for a student, and you are in the middle
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 251433, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.