Since early November, Miracle-Ear employees have been visiting various elementary, middle, and high schools in the Cape Girardeau and Jackson area in order to teach children more about their hearing. The schools that have been visited so far include North Elementary, Jefferson Elementary, the Jackson Middle School Health Fair, Jackson High School, and Deer Creek Christian Academy.

At the elementary schools, the main purpose is to teach children how the ear works. For Kindergarten through 3^rd grade,  various hands-on experiments are done in order to demonstrate different sounds. For the remaining elementary school kids as well as the middle school kids, we use our life-sized mannequin Jolene. Jolene determines safe hearing levels of various appliances like IPODs, hair dryers, etc. At the schools, we had the children put one ear bud of an IPOD in their ear and the other ear bud in Jolene’s ear. Then, we had the kids turn up the music to the level that they would normally listen to it. Jolene could then tell them how long it would be before their listening level would cause hearing damage. In addition to Jolene, for this age group we  showed the Know Noise video which educates children on hearing protection and the functions of different parts of the ear.

At the high school level, the kids got to measure various parts of Jackson High school with sound level meters. They visited the gym, the choir, a history class, and other places around the school to test the sound level coming from these various locations. They were also taught how to properly use hearing protection.

Hearing Awareness Programs will be occurring at Jackson Jr. High on December 9 and Jefferson Elementary December 11 and 16.