Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 02/99) - Ruth Bennington gets by with a little help from her little friends.

A Grade 2 teacher at J.H. Sissons school, Bennington is hard of hearing. She wears two hearing aids and having taught in the NWT for 23 years, lives a normal, productive life, but once in a while relies on the assistance of her young charges.

"On occasion I might not hear a very high-frequency sound," she said. "There's an intercom system to the office that has a beep that's out of my range, but I tell the kids to cut in on whatever I'm saying and tell me if it's ringing. The office also knows that so they'll call on the PA system if I don't respond."

The issue comes up in class from time to time. After taking the children bird-watching Monday, Bennington sat them down and talked about importance of taking care of their hearing.

"I don't make it a regular thing, but when an occasion arises, like listening to bird calls, we might discuss hearing and my own situation."

An audiology program was established in Yellowknife in the late 1970s, and the city also has its own branch of the national Canadian Hard of Hearing Association.

In fact, the association just celebrated Hard of Hearing Month and volunteer Bev Speight said members are preparing for the upcoming national convention in Moncton, N.B., from June 10 to 12.

Speight said the association has some dozen regular members but is trying to attract more through a campaign of awareness.

"We're trying to find newer, and younger members," she said. "I think there are more out there who have hearing problems -- one of the biggest problems is that they don't want to admit to having hearing difficulties because they're worried about what people think or about losing their jobs."

Speight said the association selected the term hard of hearing rather than hearing impaired because the latter expression also includes clinically deaf individuals. Hard of hearing is broken into degrees and includes moderate, severe and profound hearing loss.

Speight also wears two hearing aids and makes use of telephone amplifiers, a ringer attached to a lamp at home and close-captioned television programming.

She describes Yellowknife as a community that's receptive to the hard of hearing. She said groups like the Elks and Lions chip in for the funding that allows the branch to operate.

But Speight added there are some downsides.

"I have to turn my aids off when I walk down the street as trucks go past, and I can't go into a bar here," she said. "The music would blare my hearing aids out of town."