Do you hear what I hear?

When I first sat through the sales pitch on "sound distribution systems" I thought I was on an infomercial.  It seemed ridiculous that schools would spend money on this -  I have my teacher voice, after all.  I pride myself in that voice, that voice that I worked so hard to get after a childhood full of "Speak up!  I can't hear you!" and "Don't mumble!" and "Repeat it again so the back row can hear you!"  I fought for years for that voice.  And then I heard it.

In the demo, the teacher turned his back to me to write on the board and I heard no difference in sound quality.  And then he walked to the back of the room, still giving directions, to practice the age old technique of proximity with a student who needed a reminder to get back on task.  I heard no difference in sound quality.  This isn't a speaker system that blows out the kids sitting close to the speaker and is quieter for those sitting farther away.  It distributes sound evenly throughout the space.  

My favorite anecdote features a very active 7th grader I'll call Colby.  He liked to move, so I let him pace inside a rectangle outline I'd taped to the floor in the back of the class.  After a few days of his new space he said, "I don't like it back there!  I can always hear you, no matter where I go.  It's like you're always sitting right on my shoulder talking right to me."  Thank you, sound dispersement system, for letting me be that little voice on Colby's shoulder no matter where he roamed.

Neighboring districts are starting to purchase these systems as well.  West St. Paul, Minnetonka, Bloomington, Anoka Hennepin and others have significant numbers of these units in classrooms.  In an article in the Star Tribune on September 1, a teacher from Anoka Hennepin talked about the difference it had made in classrooms.

"Monroe Elementary School teacher Nathan Elliott began using a similar system in his second-grade classroom last year.

"I had 29 kids in my class," Elliott said. "The room is really small and when we're all crammed in here trying to do several different things at the same time, the noise just gets louder and louder and louder. It escalates because the kids need to be heard, too."

When he started using the system, he found "it almost instantly makes the whole environment calm."

Amplification isn't the point, he said.

"It's less about amplification and more about even distribution," he said. "I can lower the volume of my voice and kind of slow it down, and it doesn't have to feel so intense. ...

"There's just a sense of focus; they don't have to strain so hard to hear, to understand what I'm saying. I end up sounding clearer to them without necessarily sounding louder."

The student microphone also has focused classroom discussions and helped shy and soft-voiced children participate."  - Excerpt from Technology levies pay for tools to help kids learn from Star Tribune

Some buildings in St. Paul are choosing to spend their dollars on sound dispersement systems as well, including Obama Elementary and the Farnsworth Campuses.  Principal Hamilton Bell of Farnsworth has seen the difference it makes himself.  He calls this simple, low learning curve technology "a game-changer."     

For more information about the benefits and research on sound distribution, click here.