Inside Track
Doctoral student Lauren Barkmeier helps teachers understand the experience of students with hearing impairments
One of Lauren Barkmeier's favorite aspects of her job is the look on kids' faces when they meet her. Most of the young students she interacts with as a school psychologist intern for Minneapolis Public Schools are deaf or hard of hearing. Few have encountered adults with the same condition.
“They would be surprised to see that I had a cochlear implant like them, or hearing aids, or whatever it may be,” says Barkmeier, speaking through an American Sign Language interpreter at a cafe near campus. “It is great to see their reaction to seeing someone similar to them.”
A doctoral student in school psychology, Barkmeier works with a variety of K-12 students at different schools, gathering information about how they learn and working with educational teams to develop instructional programs that fit individual and general student needs. Though her internship focuses on students who are deaf and hard of hearing, she also works with students in other disability areas.
Barkmeier came to the college on a DOVE (Diversity of Views and Experience) scholarship from the University of Notre Dame, where she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in psychology. “I was fascinated by psychology, and I thought I wanted to be a clinical psychologist,” she says. “But then, during my senior year, I started having second thoughts. I thought, 'Where can I make the biggest impact on someone's life?’ ”
One of the biggest factors in her own childhood education, she says, was a school psychologist who specialized in working with deaf and hard of hearing students back in her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin. The psychologist's presence in the school was fleeting, but the impression was big for Barkmeier and her parents.
Set on a new course, Barkmeier was drawn to the special education program at Minnesota because of the research and experience in deaf education of her co-adviser Susan Rose. Barkmeier is continuing the tradition with her assistantship, researching how progress monitoring can be used with deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and helping design a webinar for teachers about monitoring student progress. Her dissertation work will also focus on such progress monitoring.
Eventually, she hopes to work as a school psychologist in an urban area. “The fact that I'm a deaf individual, I bring a slightly different perspective,” she says. “I've got firsthand experience.”
Story by Peter S. Scholtes | February 2011
