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Learning to listen without hearing forms student’s vision to help others
By Clayton Woullard
cwoullar@mscd.edu

In class Metro student Emma Houser is paying attention, but her eyes are not always focused on the professor. And she doesn’t always hear the lecture or her classmates talk.

She is listening; she’s just not relying on her ears to receive the message.

Houser is hard of hearing. She can hear select sounds if they’re loud or close enough, like the buzz of a lawnmower, but not voices, phones or alarm clocks. She does not like to be called “hearing-impaired.” Those in the hard of hearing and deaf community view the title as outdated and offensive, partly because it indicates some kind of loss.

“You think I don’t got stuff, but I’ve got more than you sometimes,” Houser, 19, said. “Poor me? Poor you, I’m doing fine over here.”

It seems the notion that a loss of one sense tends to heighten the others is true for Houser, who’s in her second year of college. She has no sense of smell, which doesn’t bother her much, and a diminished taste palette, but her other senses make up for it.

When she’s in the basement of her Littleton home, where she lives with her parents, she can feel when someone’s walking on the floor above. When something’s burning, her lungs will start to feel like they’re burning. And if the pilot light on the stove goes out, she said her eyes start to burn because they feel the gas, something most people with full senses might never detect.

Her brother Sam, 11, has a name for his sister’s senses.

“My brother calls it my Spidey sense,” Houser said.

Despite her “Spidey sense,” she still needs a little help sometimes. An interpreter from Metro’s Access Center accompanies her to every class to assist her through sign language with what her classmates and the instructor say. Even though she can read lips and wears a hearing aid, she said it’s nice to have someone who can clarify for her if necessary. She’s only worked with interpreters since she was in high school, so she’s still adjusting to using their help.

“I’m even still getting used to all of everything in the same way the people in my class are still getting used to me,” Houser said.

She hasn’t always been hard of hearing. According to Houser, when she was four years old she had a case of scarlet fever along with an ear infection. Her parents and doctors could only assume this may be a possible reason for her condition. It wasn’t until she was in second grade that people around her figured it out, partly because she was trying to hide it.

“I knew that there was something wrong, but I didn’t think it was bad enough to let anyone else know,” she said.

She cheated by relying on her eyes for information to give her cues for how she should react to what someone was saying or doing. It was also during that time she began to learn how to read lips.

After she was “discovered,” she had to learn to speak properly. That’s when speech/language pathologist Linda Lane stepped in. She taught Emma how to speak properly, showing her how not to thrust her tongue forward during speech when she swallowed, and explaining that just because she can’t hear sounds doesn’t mean they’re not there.

But she was a stubborn pupil at first.

“It’s hard to have something as basic as talking and have someone say, ‘Well you’re doing it wrong, here’s how to do it right,’” Houser said.

Conversely, Lane also taught her pupil that she’s not wrong for how she speaks or for being hard of hearing; she’s just different.

Since that time, she has been in touch with her speech teacher and still visits her on a regular basis at her home in Littleton. Lane also served as inspiration for Houser’s aspirations to become a speech/language pathologist.

Houser plans to receive her master’s degree in Speech/Language Pathology by 2010.

“She was one of those people that whatever was going wrong with you…she’ll make it OK for you,” Houser said.

Lane describes her student as a woman driven by what makes her strong: her kind heart, work ethic, love of children and difficulties she has had to overcome.

"She is so strong and independent and wise now. She is caring and kind and empathetic. She is wonderful with children and establishes an instant rapport with them,” Lane said. “The challenges she has faced have molded her into a super savvy woman.”

Her love of children has proven valuable for Houser in her current job. She works as an activity leader for an after-school program during the school year and a paraprofessional at Ames Elementary School in Centennial in the summer. It’s during the summer she gets to work with children much like herself.

Last summer Houser worked with a girl who was born without cartilage in her body, so she’s in a wheelchair and can’t hear or see well. When she got on the school bus, the girl would throw her glasses, hearing aids and almost anything else she had with her out the window. Houser tried to help her overcome her anger for her condition by telling her something she had to learn when she was young.

"You still need to be your own person and be independent,” Houser said. “In the end, she actually learned a lot.”

It’s Houser’s independence that might translate as defiance as she doesn’t take orders nicely, said 20-year-old Shane Oakley, who’s been Houser’s friend since they were in preschool.

“Emma’s the type of person that even if you do tell something to her, she’s going to do what she wants to do,” Oakley said. “And we’re both the same way, so that’s probably why we get along so well.”

Oakley, who’s a student at Regis University, said his friend has been the most influential person in his life. And he said despite her stubbornness, and while she may come across as distant or even cold (that she may not act like a “girl”), she’s really a strong, fighting, insightful person. And her hearing loss has allowed her to gain more in strength than others her age.

“It develops a strong person, because you have to be strong,” Oakley said, “because you have to be assertive and not care what other people think all the time.”
Her strength is what guides her positive outlook.

“It’s nice to know you’re not the only one out there who’s going through that,” Houser said.