Responsibilities of Itinerant Teachers

Itinerant teachers are not given their own classroom. They work with students individually, go from school to school, and often use their cars as mobile offices. Because they spend such little amounts of time within each school, they do not have any time to create relationships with other teachers. Itinerant teachers are accountable for knowing a lot of information. They need to know the students' general education lessons.They also need to be aware of how each students communicates (Moores and Martin, 2006). According to Bullard (2003), other responsibilities include to keep communication with parents, supervise interpreters and assistants, and to "develop good educational environments for deaf and hard of hearing students."

Being able to manage time is also a huge responsibility. For example, one would have to make a weekly schedule well ahead of time and give that schedule to each teacher at every school so they know when the itinerant teacher will be available (Bullard, 2003).

"Itinerant teachers provide consultation to mainstream students' teachers who may have no training or experience working with deaf or hard-of-hearing students. Itinerant teachers have to coordinate services with other members of the deaf or hard-of-hearing students' educational team such as the educational interpreter, speech-language pathologist, and educational administrators at the students' school. Itinerant teachers may provide deaf students with social-emotional counseling and support, helping them to feel more comfortable in mainstream classrooms" (Marschark & Hauser 2012).

Even though itinerant teachers do not have their own classrooms, they seemingly have many more responsibilities than regular teachers of the deaf. They not only have to provide one-on-one assistance to deaf students, they also have to act as ambassadors between the children and the administrators and the parents, as well as, counselors to help keep the children's moral up.

Books cited in this post:
Deaf Learners: Developments in Curriculum and Instruction by Donald F. Moores and David S. Martin
The Itinerant Teacher's Handbook by Carolyn Bullard
How Deaf Children Learn: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know by Marc Marschark and Peter C. Hauser