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I am very lucky to be the Aunty of Heather Johnson. My very beautiful and very talented niece attends a mainstream secondary school in Chesterfield, where she is a popular and active student who achieves well. She is a keen guitar player, adores swimming, has a sharp wit and a wicked sense of humour! She is also profoundly deaf and has bi-lateral cochlear implants.

 

As Assistant Head at a mainstream secondary school in Rochdale, one of my roles is to oversee the inclusion agenda for a number of our students for whom attending and achieving in a mainstream secondary school presents a considerable personal challenge. The challenges faced are many and very personal, and over the years young people have continued to inspire me as I witness their resilience and determination. It is a privilege at times to be part of a team who are in a position to support these young people in reaching personal goals as well as academic targets – and to help them on their way to successful adult life.I witness on a daily basis how vitally important having the right support in the right place at the right time is in determining a young person’s future chances. Moreover, this support is not necessarily just for the young person themselves, but for their families and carers too.

 

Having the opportunity to run the London Marathon for The Ear Foundation provides a great opportunity to give back a little support to a charity which provides just such invaluable support to thousands of children and their families both in this country and across the world. It also provides me with the opportunity to let a school full of students and their families know what a great job they do! The Ear Foundation works with deaf children locally, nationally and internationally to help them make best use of the most up to date hearing technology. It also works hard to help them cope with the specific difficulties they face within normal life situations that most of us take for granted. For example, even with cochlear implants Heather cannot separate out sounds in a noisy room such as a classroom. She can’t adjust the focus in her brain, as hearing people can. All sounds come in at exactly the same volume – both scary and extremely difficult. She cannot tell if someone is calling her across the playground, or walking up behind her!

 

My fund-raising campaign within the school is being led by a group of Year 11 students. James Bannon (whose previous fund-raising successes including helping to raise £10 000 to replace the roof of a local scout hut!) is leading the project as a part of his Citizenship GCSE – and he and his team have already done a lot of research into the number of hearing impaired children, including children with cochlear implants, within our local education authority. They have linked with relevant support agencies and have researched the work of the Ear Foundation. They are now creating a power-point/film presentation to use across school both in assemblies and in the classroom to increase understanding, raise awareness of the issues faced, and so improve the experience of those hearing impaired students within our school community.

They are very keen that all our students, staff and families come to understand the issues involved and the valuable work that the Ear Foundation does – as well as (obviously) raising lots and lots of money.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this - you can find out more about the tremendous work of the Ear foundation by llooking at their website:    www.earfoundation.org.uk