Re training to be a teacher of the deaf or speech therapist?

[happymumof3girls]

Hi there, I am currently an SEN teacher and studying sign language. I love the sign language and am ready for a career change. I’m thinking of retraining but am torn between being a teacher of the deaf or a speech and language therapist as both areas really interest me. Has anyone retrained in either of these fields? What are the pros and cons? Any advice would be welcome. Thank you ☺️

No done either, but just responding to keep your post fresh and to ask some questions. Are there specialist schools for the deaf in your area, and if not are you prepared to relocate? As for speech and language, are you thinking specifically with children or people of all ages? Schools have such incredibly tight budgets at the moment, there might be more scope working with stroke sufferers

thank you. No I can’t relocate so would need to be local-ish. I think if I went down the speech therapy route I’d still like to work with children. I guess both roles involve helping children communicate so are similar in that sense. Just need to think about which one and how much demand there is for each job upon qualifying.

A key difference is that Teachers of the Deaf often (not always) work with children who are academically able; it's primarily a physical disability. SLT is much broader and will usually involve children with additional needs of all types including neurodevelopmental disabilities. Teachers of the Deaf are much less in demand these days as the notion of separate education for Deaf children has fallen out of favour with the expectation they'll learn in mainstream, but there are units within mainstream schools and the odd specialist school that recruit. As pp said you will need to happen to live near one.
SALT is a safer bet in terms of the number of roles available in most areas.

You might be able to become an advisory teacher of the deaf for your council rather than in a school. As long as you have your teaching qualification some councils will fund for you to complete the masters alongside working.

Speech and language jobs would be more available if you trained as that as others have said the deaf side of it is more narrow so depends if council have a vacancy or if there are local deaf resource bases or schools.

Good points! Thank you for your advice everyone

Op I know of teachers of the deaf who are in deaf special schools.