WESTMINSTER : Teacher to Write About Hearing Loss

Bobbi Barras, a special-education teacher for 23 years, is taking some time off from her local teaching jobs to write about the world of those who cannot hear.

Barras, who herself has a hearing impairment, is a founding faculty member of Coastline Community College who also teaches at Oasis Senior Citizens Center in Newport Beach, Leisure World in Seal Beach and the Lincoln Education Center in Garden Grove. She has lectured on the hearing impaired as far away as Czechoslovakia and Australia.

Now she plans to write a book about how to deal with the social and psychological aspects of hearing loss.

“This book is not only just important to me, but all people who have hearing loss. Although we’ve made great strides in the last 10 years, we still have a long way to go, “ Barras said. “People are not admitting they have hearing loss.”

She said she expects the book to be out next year, along with three others she’s writing about speech reading--a method of communication for the hearing impaired--as well as jokes and poems written by her hearing-impaired students.

The speech-reading book will explain what distinguishes it from other methods of communicating, such as sign language and lip reading.

The poems speak of how people with hearing loss feel when their ability to communicate begins to wane.

One of her students, for example, writes about her “usually high spirits slithering to her feet with the rest of my confidence” because of the increasing difficulty she was having talking with her family and friends.

Barras said her book will deal with such feelings and will advise people on how to overcome common obstacles, which often force hearing-impaired people to become reclusive.

She cited the example of a couple in which the man has trouble hearing, but not the woman. At a restaurant, the man couldn’t understand the waiter, so the woman ordered for him.

“A lot of normal hearing people have good intentions, but they do the wrong things and it destroys (the hearing-impaired person’s) confidence,” Barras said.

Instead of becoming frustrated and silently dealing with such situations, Barras suggests that the person with the hearing difficulty ask people to repeat themselves or use more facial and body language to convey a message.

“The book will deal with assertiveness, unlocking the reasons why people are afraid to ask for repeats,” she said.

Sitting in her living room, which is abuzz with the ticktock and ding-dong of clocks, Barras said she began losing her hearing when she was 3 years old.

When she learned nearly 25 years ago how serious her hearing loss was, she said she was inspired to work for others.

“I reached out and there was nothing out there for me, so I put a program together. I learned right along with the students,” she said.

Today, she can carry on a conversation with the aid of a hearing device. Otherwise, she can only “hear a truck after it runs over me.”

Barras said she hopes her books will help other hearing-impaired people to move beyond their disability.

“I want my people to live. I want them to go on with their lives,” she said. “We have too many people spending too much time talking about hearing loss and not enough time talking about their hobbies, their travels.”