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The educational decisions you must make if you are the parent of a hearing-impaired or deaf child are considerably more complex than those same decisions if you have a "normal" hearing child.

If you make a decision to mainstream you will be relying on the support and expertise of the teacher for the hearing impaired who will work with your child, and of course the class teacher.

So what can the class teacher do to help?

1. Make sure your child sits in the right place. At the front, certainly. If your child has partial hearing or has more hearing in one ear than the other it may be beneficial for the child to sit on one side of the teacher rather than directly in front. Make sure the class teacher knows where is the best place and helps your child to stick to that seat.

2. One thing teachers often do is talk! Hopefully your child's teacher will be reasonable to lip read, but though you can't do much if the teacher has a strong regional accent your child finds hard, or does not herself have English as a first language, there are many things the teacher can do to make herself more lip-readable. Ensuring she talks slowly and clearly is a basic one, but many people not experienced with deaf people over-exaggerate their lip movement, not realising this is less helpful, not more. If the Hearing-impaired teacher works in the school with your child these issues will probably have been covered, but if your child is the first or only deaf student in his school, then you might need to discuss it directly with the teacher.

3. Make sure your teacher never turns her back on the class while talking. As a teacher I am conscious of the temptation to do this, as you often want to write on the board, and explain what you are writing. If the teacher only has a white board in her classroom she will have to be very disciplined to avoid talking and writing, and it may slow the lesson up for other students. so pester the school to give the teacher different equipment - even an OHP (overhead transparencies) allows the teacher to write and face forward, though your child will need to sit somewhere so the lamp does not obscure his view. And a smart board with lap top will enable things to be prepared in advance, and anything added can be written on the laptop, again facing the class. So support your teacher to get the right equipment.

4. Try to make sure your child wears his hearing aids every day, that they are regularly maintained, checked and that new ear molds are taken often - perhaps

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