Lipreading Teacher

For most people, lipreading is a sort of superpower, akin to flying, X-ray vision, or walking through walls. For the deaf and hearing-impaired, however, it’s a vital communication tool that allows them to function more normally in a speech-based society. For deaf people, a Lipreading Teacher is critical to have throughout their life.

As a Lipreading Teacher, therefore, you’re more than an Educator; you’re also a lifeline. Employed by primary, secondary, and postsecondary schools, as well as community groups, institutes for the deaf, and perhaps even private practices, alongside Audiologists or Hearing Therapists, as a Lipreading Teacher you teach lipreading — also known as speechreading — to children and adults.

Although anyone can learn to lipread — Police Officers, for example, might learn it as a surveillance technique — most of your students are deaf or hard-of-hearing. More than a neat party trick, therefore, you teach an indispensable way of communicating with other people — particularly those who don’t use sign language — that involves the visual interpretation of the way people move their lips, faces, teeth, tongues, and bodies when they talk. More simply put: You’re paid to teach people to listen with their eyes instead of their ears.

Like any Teacher, your days typically involve planning lessons, teaching courses, assigning homework, and giving and grading exams. Because lipreading is a lot more complicated than arithmetic, however, you usually spend a lot more time with individual students than the average Teacher, working with them one-on-one in order to improve their lipreading ability, aptitude, and accuracy.

Your students may never be able to hear the sound of someone’s voice. With your help, however, they can at least read what’s written on their face.